And next him sat Mrs. Pendyce. A portrait of this lady hung over the
sideboard at the end of the room, and though it had been painted by a
fashionable painter, it had caught a gleam of that "something" still in
her face these twenty years later. She was not young, her dark hair was
going grey; but she was not old, for she had been married at nineteen
and was still only fifty-two. Her face was rather long and very pale,
and her eyebrows arched and dark and always slightly raised. Her eyes
were dark grey, sometimes almost black, for the pupils dilated when she
was moved; her lips were the least thing parted, and the expression of
those lips and eyes was of a rather touching gentleness, of a rather
touching expectancy. And yet all this was not the "something"; that was
rather the outward sign of an inborn sense that she had no need to ask
for things, of an instinctive faith that she already had them. By that
"something," and by her long, transparent hands, men could tell that
she had been a Totteridge. And her voice, which was rather slow, with
a little, not unpleasant, trick of speech, and her eyelids by second
nature just a trifle lowered, confirmed this impression. Over her bosom,
which hid the heart of a lady, rose and fell a piece of wonderful old
lace.

Round the corner again Sir James Maiden and Bee Pendyce (the eldest
daughter) were talking of horses and hunting--Bee seldom from choice
spoke of anything else. Her face was pleasant and good, yet not quite
pretty, and this little fact seemed to have entered into her very
nature, making her shy and ever willing to do things for others.

Sir James had small grey whiskers and a carved, keen visage. He came of
an old Kentish family which had migrated to Cambridgeshire; his coverts
were exceptionally fine; he was also a Justice of the Peace, a Colonel
of Yeomanry, a keen Churchman, and much feared by poachers. He held