she muttered.

She took off her gingham apron, thrust it hastily into a bureau
drawer in the next room, and tied on a clean white one with a
hemstitched border. Then she went down-stairs, the starched white bow
of the apron-strings covering her slim back like a Japanese sash. She
heard voices in the south room, and entered with a little cough.
Horace and the new-comer were standing there talking. The moment
Sylvia entered, Horace stepped forward. "I hardly know how to
introduce you," he said; "I hardly know the relationship. But, Mrs.
Whitman, here is Miss Fletcher--Miss Rose Fletcher."

"Who accepts your hospitality with the utmost gratitude," said Miss
Rose Fletcher, extending a little hand in a wonderful loose gray
travelling glove. Mrs. Whitman took the offered hand and let it drop.
She was rigid and prim. She smiled, but the smile was merely a
widening of her thin, pale, compressed lips. She looked at the girl
with gray eyes, which had a curious blank sharpness in them. Rose
Fletcher was so very well dressed, so very redolent of good breeding
and style, that it was difficult at first to comprehend if that was
all. Finally one perceived that she was a very pretty girl, of a
sweet, childish type, in spite of her finished manners and her very
sophisticated clothes. Sylvia at first saw nothing except the
clothes, and realized nothing except the finished manner. She
immediately called to the front her own manners, which were as
finished as the girl's, albeit of a provincial type. Extreme manners
in East Westland required a wholly artificial voice and an expression
wholly foreign to the usual one. Horace had never before seen Sylvia
when all her manners were in evidence, and he gazed at her now in
astonishment and some dismay.