And now!
No wonder her sex laughed within her.
Until she had gone abroad to finish her education, she had lived in that
old, grey manor-house, that dreamed in the sunshine of the terrace below
which she was sitting, ever since they had brought her thither, an
orphaned child of three. Mrs. Ware, her guardian, was her adopted
mother; the sons, Dick and Austin Ware, her brothers--the engagement,
when she was ten and Dick one-and-twenty, had hardly fluttered the
fraternal relationship. She had left them a merry, kittenish child. She
had returned a woman, slender, full-bosomed, graceful, alluring, with a
maturity of fascination beyond her years. Enemies said she had gipsy
blood in her veins. If so, the infusion must have taken place long, long
ago, for her folks were as proud of their name as the Wares of Ware
House. But, for all that, there was a suggestion of the exotic in the
olive and cream complexion, and the oval face, pointing at the dimpled
chin; something of the woodland in her lithe figure and free gestures;
in her swimming, dark eyes one could imagine something fierce and
untamable lying beneath her laughing idleness.
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