She could not have looked at anything more charming, for it would have
been hard to find a girl of nobler mien than Beatrice Granger as on this
her twenty-second birthday, she stood and gazed into that misty sea.

Of rather more than middle height, and modelled like a statue, strength
and health seemed to radiate from her form. But it was her face with the
stamp of intellect and power shadowing its woman's loveliness that must
have made her remarkable among women even more beautiful than herself.
There are many girls who have rich brown hair, like some autumn leaf
here and there just yellowing into gold, girls whose deep grey eyes can
grow tender as a dove's, or flash like the stirred waters of a northern
sea, and whose bloom can bear comparison with the wilding rose. But few
can show a face like that which upon this day first dawned on Geoffrey
Bingham to his sorrow and his hope. It was strong and pure and sweet as
the keen sea breath, and looking on it one must know that beneath this
fair cloak lay a wit as fair. And yet it was all womanly; here was not
the hard sexless stamp of the "cultured" female. She who owned it was
capable of many things. She could love and she could suffer, and if need
be, she could dare or die. It was to be read upon that lovely brow and
face, and in the depths of those grey eyes--that is, by those to whom
the book of character is open, and who wish to study it.

But Beatrice was not thinking of her loveliness as she gazed into the
water. She knew that she was beautiful of course; her beauty was too
obvious to be overlooked, and besides it had been brought home to her in
several more or less disagreeable ways.

"Seven years," she was thinking, "since the night of the 'death fog;'
that was what old Edward called it, and so it was. I was only so high
then," and following her thoughts she touched herself upon the breast.