His furtive glance at the tall young woman who passed him, took in with sudden embarrassment the fact that she plainly did not belong to the dispirited world bounded by Stornham Court.

Without sparkling gems or trailing richness in her wake, she was suggestively splendid.

He did not know whether it was her hair or the build of her neck and shoulders that did it, but it was revealed to him that tiaras and collars of stones which blazed belonged without doubt to her equipment.

He recalled that there was a legend to the effect that the present Lady Anstruthers, who looked like a rag doll, had been the daughter of a rich American, and that better things might have been expected of her if she had not been such a poor-spirited creature.

If this was her sister, she perhaps was a young woman of fortune, and that she was not of poor spirit was plain.
The large drawing-room presented but another aspect of the bareness of the rest of the house.