The coldly composed expression which had confronted the priest when she spoke to him, melted away softly under the influence of Romayne's voice and Romayne's look.

Without any positive change of color, her delicate skin glowed faintly, as if it felt some animating inner warmth.

Her eyes and lips brightened with a new vitality; her frail elegant figure seemed insensibly to strengthen and expand, like the leaf of a flower under a favoring sunny air.

When she answered Romayne (agreeing with him, it is needless to say), there was a tender persuasiveness in her tones, shyly inviting him still to speak to her and still to look at her, which would in itself have told Father Benwell the truth, even if he had not been in a position to see her face.

Confirmed in his doubts of her, he looked, with concealed suspicion, at Lady Loring next.