even, sombre, untransparent tone that belongs to a temperament at once
bilious and robust. For the rest, Nature had aimed nobly at the
significance of the whole, slurring the details. She had built up the
forehead low and wide, thrown out the eyebones as a shelter for the
slightly prominent eyes; saved the short, straight line of the nose by a
hair's-breadth from a tragic droop. But she had scamped her work in
modelling the close, narrow nostrils. She had merged the lower lip with
the line of the chin, missing the classic indentation. The mouth itself
she had left unfinished. Only a little amber mole, verging on the thin
rose of the upper lip, foreshortened it, and gave to its low arc the
emphasis of a curve, the vivacity of a dimple (Anne's under lip was
straight as the tense string of a bow). When she spoke or smiled Anne's
mole seemed literally to catch up her lip against its will, on purpose to
show the small white teeth below. Majendie loved Anne's mole. It was that
one charming and emphatic fault in her face, he said, that made it human.
But Anne was ashamed of it.

She surveyed her own reflection in the glass sadly, and sadly went
through the practised, mechanical motions of her dressing; smoothing the
back of her irreproachable coat, arranging her delicate laces with a
deftness no indifference could impair. Yesterday she had had delight in
that new garment and in her own appearance. She knew that Majendie
admired her for her distinction and refinement. Now she wondered what he
could have seen in her--after Lady Cayley. At Lady Cayley's personality
she had not permitted herself so much as to guess. Enough that the woman
was notorious--infamous.

There was a knock at the door, the low knock she had come to know, and
Majendie entered in obedience to her faint call.