'Thank you,' Averil answered, playing with her heavy jet watch-guard.
'You are very good; but I am sure he could not move so soon.'

'Ave,' called Leonard at that moment; and Ethel, perceiving that she
likewise was to advance, came forth in time to hear, 'O, Ave! I am to
go to the sea next week, with Aubrey May and his sister. Won't it--'

Then becoming aware of the visitor, he stopped short, threw his feet
off the sofa, and stood up to receive her.

'I can't let you come if you do like that,' she said, shaking his
long thin hand; and he let himself down again, not, however, resuming
his recumbent posture, and giving a slight but effective frown to
silence his sister's entreaties that he would do so. He sat, leaning
back as though exceedingly feeble, scarcely speaking, but his eyes
eloquent with eagerness. And very fine eyes they were! Ethel
remembered her own weariness, some twelve or fourteen years back, of
the raptures of her baby-loving sisters about those eyes; and now in
the absence of the florid colouring of health, she was the more
struck by the beauty of the deep liquid brown, of the blue tinge of
the white, and of the lustrous light that resided in them, but far
more by their power of expression, sometimes so soft and melancholy,
at other moments earnest, pleading, and almost flashing with
eagerness. It was a good mouth too, perhaps a little inclined to
sternness of mould about the jaw and chin; but that might have been
partly from the absence of all softening roundness, aging the
countenance for the time, just as illness had shrunk the usually
sturdy figure.