great room, where she sat herself on a couch in a window, seeming
to watch the reflection of the water as it made a silver quivering
on the bars of the lattice. She sat, turned away from the whole
length of the apartment, as if she were lonely of her own haughty
choice. And yet it would have been as difficult as ever to say,
positively, whether she avoided the rest, or was avoided.

The shadow in which she sat, falling like a gloomy veil across her
forehead, accorded very well with the character of her beauty. One
could hardly see the face, so still and scornful, set off by the
arched dark eyebrows, and the folds of dark hair, without wondering
what its expression would be if a change came over it. That it
could soften or relent, appeared next to impossible. That it could
deepen into anger or any extreme of defiance, and that it must
change in that direction when it changed at all, would have been
its peculiar impression upon most observers. It was dressed and
trimmed into no ceremony of expression. Although not an open face,
there was no pretence in it. 'I am self-contained and self-
reliant; your opinion is nothing to me; I have no interest in you,
care nothing for you, and see and hear you with indifference'--this
it said plainly. It said so in the proud eyes, in the lifted
nostril, in the handsome but compressed and even cruel mouth.
Cover either two of those channels of expression, and the third
would have said so still. Mask them all, and the mere turn of the
head would have shown an unsubduable nature.

Pet had moved up to her (she had been the subject of remark among
her family and Mr Clennam, who were now the only other occupants of
the room), and was standing at her side.