To passion she was a complete stranger, and won all her games because with her great beauty she was as cold as ice.
She was not feeling perfectly content this Good Friday afternoon.
Something had happened since the evening before which had altered John Derringham's point of view towards her.

She felt it distinctly with her senses, trained like an animal's, to scent the most subtle things in connection with herself.

It was impossible to seize, she could not analyze it, but there it was; certainly there seemed to be some change.
He was brilliant, and had been even _empresse_ before lunch, but it was not spontaneous, and she was not perfectly sure that it was not assumed.

It was his cleverness which attracted her.

She could not see the other side of his head--not that she would have understood what that meant, if she had heard the phrase.
But her habit was not to sit down under an adverse circumstance, but to probe its source and eradicate it, or, at least, counteract it.