WHEN PIPPA PASSED
cold, they told him; for his part he never could see why. True, she was not kittenish, like the other nieces; she didn't try to flirt with her old uncle, as Ellen's girls did; but what an enthusiasm for fine things, what a quick, keen mind the child had! Child—Anne was twenty-five by now. Was it true that she might never marry? Ellen said—but then Ellen was always a little jealous of poor Anne's money. The girl couldn't help her legacies. Still, at twenty-five—perhaps it was true that she expected too much, thought too seriously, reasoned morbidly that they were after her money.
Seated opposite her in his favourite oak chair, looking with a sudden impersonal appraisal at the slender figure in clinging black lace, the cool pallor of the face under the smooth dark hair, the rope of pearls that hung from her firm, girlish shoulders, it dawned on him that there was something wanting in this not quite sufficiently charming piece of womanhood. She was too black-and-white, too unswerving, too unflushed by life. Humanity, with its countless moulding and colouring touches, seemed to slip away from either side
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