But it was the impassivity of the face and detachment of attitude which chained Colwyn's attention and stimulated his intellectual curiosity.

The human face is usually an index to the owner's character, but this girl's face was a mask which revealed nothing.

The features might have been marble for anything they displayed, as she stood by the bedside regarding with grave inscrutable eyes the group of men in the doorway.

There was something pathetic in the contrast between her grace and beauty and stillness and the uncouth gestures and meaningless stare of the old woman in the bed behind her.
The old woman, moving from side to side with the unhappy restlessness which characterises the insane, dropped over the side of the bed the object she had been nursing in her arms, and looked at the girl with the dumb entreaty of an animal.

The girl stooped down by the side of the bed, picked up the fallen article, and restored it to the mad woman.