It was a radiant figure, small and perfect like a sun sprite, that issued from the room three quarters of an hour later to flit along the polished oak hall, to descend a stairway glistening like hall above and wider and loftier hall below. With hair piled high on her small head, with tail of matinee over her arm and tall heels clicking merrily on the steps, she whistled as she went. Some people—women—criticised that laughter-loving mouth of hers as too wide for so small a face. It certainly did not suggest a button-hole. But no one could have found fault with the shape of the mouth or with the coloring, whether of the lips or within, or with her teeth, pearl white and seeming the whiter for the rose bronze of her skin—the shade that seems to be of the essence of youth, health, and summer. Her nose was rather large, but slender and well shaped. It was the nose of mobility, of sensitiveness, of intelligence, not at all of repose. And there were her eyes, of a strange soft emerald, with long dark lashes; the brows long also and only slightly curved, and slender yet distinct. These eyes were her greatest beauty—greater even than her skin. It would have been difficult to say whether in them or in her mouth lay her greatest charm, for charm is not always beauty, and beauty often wholly lacks charm.
But woman feels that figure determines the woman—"the woman" meaning, of course, efficiency as a man catcher. It was upon Courtney’s flawless figure that the sour glance of old Nanny, the head servant, rested—old Nanny, whose puritanism aggravated for her by suppression all the damned charms of "the flesh." Nanny had reigned supreme in that house ever since Dick Vaughan was left alone; so from the first news of the engagement she had been hating Courtney, whom she regarded as her supplanter. As Courtney entered the dining room, stiff and dim and chilly, like all the rooms in that house, old Nanny was superintending fat, subdued Mazie at work at the breakfast table. It occupied the exact center of the room, formal as for a state banquet.
"Good morning," cried Courtney in her charming manner of bright friendliness. "Good morning, Mazie. Am I late? Where’s Richard?" Her voice was deeper than one would have expected, but low and musical.