he saw her standing in the great doorway of the east wing where the three steps led down on to the terrace. she stood on the topmost step, poised for her descent, shaking her scarf loose to drift in a white mist about her. then she came down the terrace very slowly, and the measured sweep of her limbs suggested that all her movements would be accomplished to a large rhythm and with a superb delay.
her effect (she had not missed it) was to be seen in all its wonder and perfection on laurence furnival's face. averted suddenly from mrs. viveash, furnival's face expressed the violence of his shock and his excitement. [pg 104] it was clear that he had never seen anything quite like philippa tarrant before, and that he found her incredibly and ambiguously interesting. ambiguously—no other word did justice to the complexity of his facial expression. he did not know all at once what to make of philippa, and, from further and more furtive manifestations of furnival's, straker gathered that the young man was making something queer. he had a sort of sympathy with him, for there had been moments when he himself had not known exactly what to make. he doubted whether even fanny brocklebank (who certainly made the best of her) had ever really known.
whatever her inscrutable quality, this year she was, as fanny had said, more so than ever. she was stupendous; and that although she was not strictly speaking beautiful. she had no color in her white face or in her black hair; she had no color but the morbid rose of her mouth and the brown of her eyes. yet mrs. viveash, with all her vivid gold and carmine, went out before her; so did pretty fanny, though fresh as paint and burnished to perfection; as for the other women, they were nowhere. she made the long golden terrace at amberley a desert place for the illusion of her somber and solitary beauty. she was warm-fleshed, warm-blooded. the sunshine soaked into her as she stood there. what was more, she had the air of being entirely in keeping with amberley's grand style.
straker saw that from the first she was aware of furnival. at three yards off she held him with her eyes, lightly, balancing him; then suddenly she let him go. she ceased to be aware of him. in the moment of introduction she turned from him to straker.
"mr. straker—but—how delightful!"
"don't say you didn't expect to see me here." [pg 105]
"i didn't. and mr. higginson!" she laughed at the positive absurdity of it. "and mr. lawson and miss probyn."
she held herself a little back and gazed upon the group with her wide and wonderful eyes.
"you look," she said, "as if something interesting had happened."
she had seated herself beside straker so that she faced mrs. viveash and young furnival. she appeared not to know that furnival was staring at her.
"she's the only interesting thing that's happened—so far," he muttered. (there was no abatement of his stare.) mrs. viveash tried to look as if she agreed with him.
miss tarrant had heard him. her eyes captured and held him again, a little longer this time. straker, who watched the two, saw that something passed between them, between philippa's gaze and furnival's stare.
