While Mrs. Solent ate her cold mutton and hot caper-sauce with hungry relish and rallied the nervous churchwarden, Wolf took the opportunity of studying in quiet self-effacement the expressive countenance of Mr. Smith’s daughter. Mattie turned out to be a girl with a fine figure, but an unappealing face. She looked about twenty-five. She was not pretty in any sense at all, in spite of what Mrs. Solent had said. Her thick, prominent nose was out of all proportion to the rest of her face. Her chin, her forehead, her eyes, were all rendered insignificant by the size of this dominant and uncomely feature.

But though Aunt Mattie’s eyes were small and of a colour that varied between grey and green, they possessed a certain formidable power. A person gazing into them for the second or third time found himself looking hastily away, as if he had been caught trespassing in a very rigidly preserved estate.