'
'I mean for women,' she said, with the minutest fall of
countenance, and a hope that she had been misunderstood.
'So do I,' Knight replied.
It was impossible for any man not to know the colour of Elfride's
hair. In women who wear it plainly such a feature may be
overlooked by men not given to ocular intentness. But hers was
always in the way. You saw her hair as far as you could see her
sex, and knew that it was the palest brown. She knew instantly
that Knight, being perfectly aware of this, had an independent
standard of admiration in the matter.
Elfride was thoroughly vexed. She could not but be struck with
the honesty of his opinions, and the worst of it was, that the
more they went against her, the more she respected them. And now,
like a reckless gambler, she hazarded her last and best treasure.
Her eyes: they were her all now.
'What coloured eyes do you like best, Mr. Knight?' she said
slowly.
'Honestly, or as a compliment?'
'Of course honestly; I don't want anybody's compliment!'
And yet Elfride knew otherwise: that a compliment or word of
approval from that man then would have been like a well to a
famished Arab.
'I prefer hazel,' he said serenely.
She had played and lost again.
Chapter XIX
'Love was in the next degree.'
Knight had none of those light familiarities of speech which, by
judicious touches of epigrammatic flattery, obliterate a woman's
recollection of the speaker's abstract opinions.
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