But time had dragged on; Corinna had come home again; and Alice Rokeby's violet eyes had grown deeper and more wistful, with a haunted look in them as if they were denying a hungry heart.

She had never dressed well; she had never, as Mrs.Stribling remarked, known how to bring out her best points; and to-night she had been even less successful than usual.
Both Corinna and Mrs.Stribling could have told her that she should have avoided violent shades; and yet she was wearing now a dress of vivid purple which made her pale rose-leaf complexion look almost sallow.
Though she could exercise when she chose a strangely passive attraction, her charm usually failed in the end for lack of intelligent guidance.
A little beyond Alice Rokeby, where her eyes could follow his gestures, John Benham was talking in his pleasant subdued voice to Patty Vetch, who looked, in her frock of scarlet tulle, as if she had just alighted from the chorus of a musical comedy.

Her boyish dark head was bent over a fan of scarlet feathers, a toy which appeared ridiculously large beside her small figure.

It was evident that the girl was trying to cover an uncomfortable shyness with an air of mocking effrontery; and a moment later, when Corinna joined them, Benham glanced up with a flash of satirical amusement in his eyes.

He was a tall thin man of middle age, with a striking appearance and the straight composed features of an early American portrait.