Eppie was a little late in coming, and Gavan, while he and the general finished their wandering consumption of porridge and sat down to bacon and eggs, had time to observe by daylight in Miss Barbara, behind her high silver urn, the changes that in her were even more emphatic than in her brother. She was sweeter than ever, more appealing, more affirmative, with all manner of futile, fluttering little gestures and gentle, half-inarticulate little ejaculations of pleasure, approbation, or distress. Her smile, rather silly, worked too continually, as though moved by slackened wires. Her hands defined, described, ejaculated; over-expression had become automatic with her. Eppie, when she appeared, said that she had had a walk, stooping to kiss her aunt and giving Gavan a firm, chill hand on her way to the same office for the general. She took her seat opposite Gavan, whistling an Irish-terrier to her from the door and, before she began to eat, dropping large fragments of bannock into his mouth. Her loose, frieze clothes smelled of peat and sunshine; her hair seemed to have the sparkle of the dew on it; she suggested mountain tarns, skylarks, morning gladness: but, with all this, Gavan, for the first time, now that she faced the hard, high light, saw how deeply, too, she suggested sadness. Her face had moments of looking older than his own. It was fresh, it was young, but it had lived a great deal, and felt things to the bone, as it were. There were little wrinkles about her eyes; her white brow, under its sweep of hair, was faintly lined; the oval of her cheek, long and fine, took, at certain angles, an almost haggard sharpness. It was not a faded face, nor a face to wither with years: every line of it spoke of a permanent beauty; but, with all the color that the chill morning air had brought into it, it yet made one think of bleak uplands, of weather-beaten cliffs. Life had engraved it with ineffaceable symbols. Storms had left their mark, bitter conflicts and bitter endurances.