and a long drab coat. Emily, who traveled third with some workmen with
bundles, looked out of her window as they passed, and might possibly
have breathed a faint sigh if she had not felt in such buoyant spirits.
She had put on her revived brown skirt and a white linen blouse with a
brown dot on it. A soft brown silk tie was knotted smartly under her
fresh collar, and she wore her new sailor hat. Her gloves were brown,
and so was her parasol. She looked nice and taut and fresh, but notably
inexpensive. The people who went to sales and bought things at three and
eleven or "four-three" a yard would have been able add her up and work
out her total. But there would be no people capable of the calculation
at Mallowe. Even the servants' hall was likely to know less of prices
than this one guest did. The people the drab-coated footman escorted to
the first-class carriage were a mother and daughter. The mother had
regular little features, and would have been pretty if she had not been
much too plump. She wore an extremely smart travelling-dress and a
wonderful dust-cloak of cool, pale, thin silk. She was not an elegant
person, but her appointments were luxurious and self-indulgent. Her
daughter was pretty, and had a slim, swaying waist, soft pink cheeks,
and a pouting mouth. Her large picture-hat of pale-blue straw, with its
big gauze bow and crushed roses, had a slightly exaggerated Parisian
air.

"It is a little too picturesque," Emily thought; "but how lovely she
looks in it! I suppose it was so becoming she could not help buying it.
I'm sure it's Virot."

As she was looking at the girl admiringly, a man passed her window. He
was a tall man with a square face. As he passed close to Emily, he
stared through her head as if she had been transparent or invisible. He
got into the smoking-carriage next to her.