She looked
taller; she stepped with a more graceful assurance, and in offering
her hand, betrayed consciousness of Otway's admiration in a little
flush that well became her.
She had subdued her voice, chastened her expressions. The touch of
masculinity on which she had prided herself in her later "Bohemian"
days, was quite gone. Wondering as they conversed, Piers had a
difficulty in meeting her look; his eyes dropped to the little silk
shoe which peeped from beneath her skirt. His senses were gratified;
he forgot for the moment his sorrow and unrest.
The talk at dinner was rather formal. Piers, with his indifferent
appetite, could do but scanty justice to the dainties offered him,
and the sense of luxury added a strangeness to his new relations
with Mrs. Hannaford and her daughter. Olga spoke of a Russian novel
she had been reading in a French translation, and was anxious to
know whether it represented life as Otway knew it in Russia. She
evinced a wider interest in several directions, emphasised--
perhaps a little too much--her inclination for earnest thought:
was altogether a more serious person than hitherto.
Afterwards, when they grouped themselves in the drawing-room, this
constraint fell away. Mrs. Hannaford dropped a remark which awakened
memories of their life together at Geneva, and Piers turned to her
with a bright look.
"You used to play in those days," he said, "and I've never heard you
touch a piano since.
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