Her black hair
and eyes were more than usually striking, by contrast with a very simple
and unadorned white dress; but for beauty, her face required animation;
it could be all but plain in moments of languor or abstraction; and Sir
Wilfrid marveled that a girl's secret instinct did not save her from
presenting herself so unattractively to her lover.
Newbury, it appeared, had spent the preceding night in what Sir Wilfrid
obstinately called a "monkery"--_alias_ the house of an Anglican
brotherhood or Community--the Community of the Ascension, of which
Newbury's great friend, Father Brierly, was Superior. In requital for
Newbury's teasing of Marcia, Sir Wilfrid would have liked to tease Newbury
a little on the subject of the "monkery." But Newbury most dexterously
evaded him. He would laugh, but not at the hosts he had just quitted; and
through all his bantering good temper there could be felt the throb of some
deep feeling which was not allowed to express itself. "Damned queer eyes!"
was Bury's inward comment, as he happened once to observe Newbury's face
during a pause of silence. "Half in a dream all the time--even when the
fellow's looking at his sweetheart.
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