- eight, with very fair hair streaked with grey, and a thin,
aristocratic type of face, with thin lips. She wore a black silk dress with some fur round her shoulders.
"It will be no inconvenience to us, sir," she answered in good English, a little hard and over-emphasised. "Although the English people are pleased to call us Huns"—here she laughed good-humouredly—"I trust that you will not be too uncomfortable in a German house, in spite of the privations due to our misfortunes and the severity of your blockade."
In that short speech there was a hint of hostility—masked under a graciousness of manner—which Wickham Brand did not fail to perceive.
"As long as it is not inconvenient" he said, awkwardly.
It was the daughter who now spoke, and Brand was grateful for her friendly words, and impressed by her undeniable and exceptional good looks. That she was the daughter of the older woman was clear at a glance. She had the same thin face and fair hair, but Youth was on her side, and her finely-chiselled features had no hardness of line that comes from age or bitterness. Her hair was like spun gold, as one sees it in Prussia more, I fancy, than in southern Germany, and her complexion was that perfect rose-red and lily-white which often belongs to German girls, and is doll-like if they are soft and plump, as many are. This girl's fault was thinness, but to Brand, not a sentimentalist, nor quickly touched by feminine influence (I have written that, but on second thoughts believe that under Brand's ruggedness there was a deep strain of sentiment, approaching weakness), she seemed flower-like and spiritual. So he told me after his early acquaintance with her.
Her first words to him were charming.
"We have suffered very much from the war, sir, but
