very prettily braided about a rather rounder white forehead than the
average English type, and so her face might have been a shade--or say a
light--rounder than the average English face, and her figure slightly
rounder than the figure of the average English girl at nineteen. A
remarkable indication of freedom and grace of limb, in her quiet
attitude, and a wonderful purity and freshness of colour in her dimpled
face and bright gray eyes, seemed fraught with mountain air. Switzerland
too, though the general fashion of her dress was English, peeped out of
the fanciful bodice she wore, and lurked in the curious clocked red
stocking, and in its little silver-buckled shoe. As to the elder lady,
sitting with her feet apart upon the lower brass ledge of the stove,
supporting a lap-full of gloves while she cleaned one stretched on her
left hand, she was a true Swiss impersonation of another kind; from the
breadth of her cushion-like back, and the ponderosity of her respectable
legs (if the word be admissible), to the black velvet band tied tightly
round her throat for the repression of a rising tendency to goitre; or,
higher still, to her great copper-coloured gold ear-rings; or, higher
still, to her head-dress of black gauze stretched on wire.

"Miss Marguerite," said Obenreizer to the young lady, "do you recollect
this gentleman?"

"I think," she answered, rising from her seat, surprised and a little
confused: "it is Mr. Vendale?"

"I think it is," said Obenreizer, dryly. "Permit me, Mr. Vendale. Madame
Dor."

The elder lady by the stove, with the glove stretched on her left hand,
like a glover's sign, half got up, half looked over her broad shoulder,