The child's large dark grey eyes--perhaps they were a dark hazel--yet who may tell the shade of women's eyes at one swift glance!--fringed with dark lashes, as he had recalled to the Earl of Peterborough, were, of course, the same; but the rest had changed. The dark chestnut hair that, in Sylvia's girlhood, had flowed loosely about her, was now coiled in masses above her white forehead; the clear-cut features that had promised so much in the young girl had redeemed in her young womanhood that which they promised. And those quiet, calm eyes well became the oval face, straight nose, and small mouth, the upper lip being divinely short; while, when Lord Peterborough had agreed that she was passing fair, and the Comtesse had said that she was beautiful yet seemed not to know that she was so, each had judged aright. Also, there was in her the tranquillity that the latter had spoken of, but shadowed, too, by the memory of a recent sorrow. For the rest, she was, like Rosalind, "more than common tall," upright, and full of dignity; a woman who, as years went on--if they were peaceful, quiet ones, with all that should accompany them, such as love, home, and children; years undisturbed by the struggles for triumph or the tears of failure--would develop into a stately, and it may be commanding one. Doubtless, as Bevill looked on Sylvia Thorne, so, also, she looked to see what changes time had wrought in the youth who, once little better than a stripling, was now a man, strong, firm, self-reliant. If so, what she saw should not have impressed her unfavourably. The handsome features had not altered, but only become more firmly set; the mouth, well shaped, spoke of determination, and told of one who, without obstinacy, would still remain unturned from any resolution he had come to; the stalwart form of the man had taken the place of the tall, promising youth. Seated in that great hall into which by now the rays of the evening sun were pouring, and to which two servants had brought great candelabra filled with white wax candles, while they had already lit those in the sconces on the pillars, Sylvia and Bevill spoke of what the future might have before them. But that which Sylvia now told the young man seemed scarcely to convey the idea that he had undertaken a journey likely to bear much fruit.