It had been somewhat of a quiet shock to him to find Mr. Stone close to
the doorway when he entered Bianca's studio that afternoon; for though
he had seen him since the encounter in Kensington Gardens, and knew that
he was writing a book, he still felt that he was not quite the sort of
old man that one ought to meet about. He had at once begun to tell him
of the hanging of the Shoreditch murderer, as recorded in the evening
papers. Mr. Stone's reception of that news had still further confirmed
his original views. When all the guests were gone--with the exception
of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Dallison and Miss Dallison, "that awfully pretty
girl," and the young man "who was always hangin' about her"--he had
approached his hostess for some quiet talk. She stood listening to him,
very well bred, with just that habitual spice of mockery in her smile,
which to Mr. Purcey's eyes made her "a very strikin'-lookin' woman, but
rather---" There he would stop, for it required a greater psychologist
than he to describe a secret disharmony which a little marred her
beauty. Due to some too violent cross of blood, to an environment too
unsuited, to what not--it was branded on her. Those who knew Bianca
Dallison better than Mr. Purcey were but too well aware of this
fugitive, proud spirit permeating one whose beauty would otherwise have
passed unquestioned.

She was a little taller than Cecilia, her figure rather fuller and more
graceful, her hair darker, her eyes, too, darker and more deeply set,
her cheek-bones higher, her colouring richer. That spirit of the age,
Disharmony, must have presided when a child so vivid and dark-coloured
was christened Bianca.

Mr. Purcey, however, was not a man who allowed the finest shades of
feeling to interfere with his enjoyments. She was a "strikin'-lookin'
woman," and there was, thanks to Harpignies, a link between them.