He had just discovered the fact, and the discovery filled him with
exquisite apprehension.

If he had waited till the age of thirty-two for that springtime of the
soul which we call love, Clive had not waited for nothing. Eva was a
woman to enravish the heart of a man whose imagination could pierce the
agitating secrets immured in that calm and silent bosom. Slender and
scarcely tall, she belonged to the order of spare, slight-made women,
who hide within their slim frames an endowment of profound passion far
exceeding that of their more voluptuously-formed sisters, who never
coarsen into stoutness, and who at forty are as disturbing as at twenty.
At this date Eva was twenty-six. She had a rather small, white face,
which was a mask to the casual observer, and the very mirror of her
feelings to anyone with eyes to read its signs.

'I tell you what you are like,' said Clive to her once: 'you are like a
fine racehorse, always on the quiver.'

Yet many people considered her cold and impassive. Her walk and bearing
showed a sensitive independence, and when she spoke it was usually in
tones of command. The girls in the shop, where she was a power second
only to Ezra Brunt, were a little afraid of her, chiefly because she
poured terrible scorn on their small affectations, jealousies, and
vendettas. But they liked her because, in their own phrase, 'there was
no nonsense about' this redoubtable woman. She hated shams and
make-believes with a bitter and ruthless hatred. She was the heiress to
at least five thousand a year, and knew it well, but she never
encouraged her father to complicate their simple mode of life with the
pomps of wealth. They lived in a house with a large garden at Pireford,