fissures. Scarcely less shy than in girlhood, she walked with a
quick, ungainly movement as if seeking to escape from some one, her
head bent forward.

Virginia (about thirty-three) had also an unhealthy look, but the
poverty, or vitiation, of her blood manifested itself in less
unsightly forms. One saw that she had been comely, and from certain
points of view her countenance still had a grace, a sweetness, all
the more noticeable because of its threatened extinction. For she
was rapidly ageing; her lax lips grew laxer, with emphasis of a
characteristic one would rather not have perceived there; her eyes
sank into deeper hollows; wrinkles extended their network; the flesh
of her neck wore away. Her tall meagre body did not seem strong
enough to hold itself upright.

Alice had brown hair, but very little of it. Virginia's was inclined
to be ruddy; it surmounted her small head in coils and plaits not
without beauty. The voice of the elder sister had contracted an
unpleasant hoarseness, but she spoke with good enunciation; a slight
stiffness and pedantry of phrase came, no doubt, of her scholastic
habits. Virginia was much more natural in manner and fluent in
speech, even as she moved far more gracefully.

It was now sixteen years since the death of Dr. Madden of Clevedon.
The story of his daughters' lives in the interval may be told with
brevity suitable to so unexciting a narrative.

When the doctor's affairs were set in order, it was found that the
patrimony of his six girls amounted, as nearly as possible, to eight
hundred pounds.