She spoke with a confidence which, on softer notes, emulated that of her aged relative; she carried her head with a conscious stateliness which might have been--perhaps was--deliberately studied after the portrait in the Rivenoak dining-room.

Harmonious with this change was that in her attire; fashion had done its best to transform the aspiring young provincial into a metropolitan Grace; the result being that Miss Tomalin seemed to have grown in stature, to exhibit a more notable symmetry, so that she filled more space in the observer's eye than heretofore.

For all that, she looked no older; her self-assertion, though more elaborate, was not a bit more impressive, and the phrases she used, the turn of her sentences, the colour of her speech, very little resembled anything that would have fallen from a damsel bred in the modish world.

Her affectation was shot through with spontaneity; her impertinence had a juvenile seriousness which made it much more amusing than offensive; and a feminine charm in her, striving to prevail over incongruous elements, made clear appeal to the instincts of the other sex.
"That is very encouraging," was Lashmar's reply.

"If only one's thoughts can be of any help to others--" "What time is it ?" broke in Lady Ogram.