Miss Batchelor was clever--frightfully clever--but she never showed up well in public; she had a nervous manner, and a way of looking at you as if you were some curious animal that she would like to pat if she were perfectly sure you were not dangerous.

And when you were about to take compassion on her shyness, she startled you with a sudden lapse into self-possession.

I can see her now looking at Tyson over the frills on her shoulder, with her thin crooked little mouth smiling slightly.

She might well look, for Nevill Tyson's appearance was remarkable.

He might have been any age between twenty-five and forty; as a matter of fact he was thirty-six.