disgustingly difficult. She must think him hopeless indeed!

His sister's eyes, fixed on him with a certain astonishment, obliged him
at last to look at Fleur; but instantly her eyes, very wide and eager,
seeming to say, "Oh! for goodness' sake!" obliged him to look at Val,
where a grin obliged him to look at his cutlet--that, at least, had no
eyes, and no grin, and he ate it hastily.

"Jon is going to be a farmer," he heard Holly say; "a farmer and a
poet."

He glanced up reproachfully, caught the comic lift of her eyebrow just
like their father's, laughed, and felt better.

Val recounted the incident of Monsieur Prosper Profond; nothing could
have been more favourable, for, in relating it, he regarded Holly, who
in turn regarded him, while Fleur seemed to be regarding with a slight
frown some thought of her own, and Jon was really free to look at her at
last. She had on a white frock, very simple and well made; her arms were
bare, and her hair had a white rose in it. In just that swift moment of
free vision, after such intense discomfort, Jon saw her sublimated, as
one sees in the dark a slender white fruit-tree; caught her like a verse
of poetry flashed before the eyes of the mind, or a tune which floats
out in the distance and dies. He wondered giddily how old she was--she
seemed so much more self-possessed and experienced than himself. Why
mustn't he say they had met? He remembered suddenly his mother's face;
puzzled, hurt-looking, when she answered: "Yes, they're relations,
but we don't know them." Impossible that his mother, who loved beauty,
should not admire Fleur if she did know her.