Perhaps you will take a seat." With this invitation Rowland prepared to comply, and, turning, grasped the first chair that offered itself.
"Not that one," said a full, grave voice; whereupon he perceived that a quantity of sewing-silk had been suspended and entangled over the back, preparatory to being wound on reels.

He felt the least bit irritated at the curtness of the warning, coming as it did from a young woman whose countenance he had mentally pronounced interesting, and with regard to whom he was conscious of the germ of the inevitable desire to produce a responsive interest.

And then he thought it would break the ice to say something playfully urbane.
"Oh, you should let me take the chair," he answered, "and have the pleasure of holding the skeins myself!" For all reply to this sally he received a stare of undisguised amazement from Miss Garland, who then looked across at Mrs.Hudson with a glance which plainly said: "You see he 's quite the insidious personage we feared." The elder lady, however, sat with her eyes fixed on the ground and her two hands tightly clasped.

But touching her Rowland felt much more compassion than resentment; her attitude was not coldness, it was a kind of dread, almost a terror.

She was a small, eager woman, with a pale, troubled face, which added to her apparent age.