And presently,
before dinner, she would contrive that they should have an
hour by themselves in her sitting-room, and he would sit by
the hearth and watch her quiet movements, and the way the
bluish lustre on her hair purpled a little as she bent above
the fire.
A carriage drove out of the court as he entered it, and in
the hall his vision was dispelled by the exceedingly
substantial presence of a lady in a waterproof and a tweed
hat, who stood firmly planted in the centre of a pile of
luggage, as to which she was giving involved but lucid
directions to the footman who had just admitted her. She
went on with these directions regardless of Darrow's
entrance, merely fixing her small pale eyes on him while she
proceeded, in a deep contralto voice, and a fluent French
pronounced with the purest Boston accent, to specify the
destination of her bags; and this enabled Darrow to give her
back a gaze protracted enough to take in all the details of
her plain thick-set person, from the square sallow face
beneath bands of grey hair to the blunt boot-toes protruding
under her wide walking skirt.
She submitted to this scrutiny with no more evidence of
surprise than a monument examined by a tourist; but when the
fate of her luggage had been settled she turned suddenly to
Darrow and, dropping her eyes from his face to his feet,
asked in trenchant accents: "What sort of boots have you got
on?"
Before he could summon his wits to the consideration of this
question she continued in a tone of suppressed indignation:
"Until Americans get used to the fact that France is under
water for half the year they're perpetually risking their
lives by not being properly protected.
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