Then taking up a broken comb, she ran it through the soft lock of hair
that fell like a brown wing over her forehead. Her bright dark eyes,
fringed in short thick lashes and set wide apart under arched eyebrows,
gazed questioningly back at her from a row of german favours with which
she had decorated the glass; and it was as if the face of youth,
flickering with a flamelike glow and intensity, swam there for an
instant in the dim greenish pool of the mirror. Beneath the charm of the
face there was the character which one associates, not with youth, but
with age and experience. Beneath the fine, clear lines of her head and
limbs, the tall slenderness of her figure, the look of swiftness and of
energy, which was almost birdlike in its grace and poise, there was a
strength and vigour which suggested a gallant boy rather than the
slighter and softer frame of a girl.

While she stood there, Gabriella thought regretfully of all that it
would mean to give up her half-dependent and wholly ladylike existence
and go to work in a shop. Necessity not choice was driving her; and in
spirit she looked back almost wistfully to the securely circumscribed
lot of her grandmother. For there was little of the rebel in her
temperament; and had she been free to choose, she would have
instinctively selected, guided by generations of gregarious ancestors,
the festive girlhood which Cousin Pussy had so ardently described. She
wanted passionately all the things that other girls had, and her only
quarrel, indeed, with the sheltered life was that she couldn't afford
it. In the expressive phrase of Cousin Jimmy, the sheltered life "cost
money," and to cost money was to be beyond the eager grasp of Gabriella.

The door opened as if yielding under protest, and Marthy entered, still
hurriedly tying the strings of the clean apron she had slipped on over
her soiled one before answering the door-bell.