The Man in Possession — page 85: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

80 THE MAN IN POSSESSION. debts and bailiffs had surely no place. But the girl, however nervous she felt, never betrayed it by the quiver of an eyelash. Her gracious ease and self- possession, as she returned Lady Jocelyn’s greeting, delighted that lady, who admired ‘‘style” above all things, deeming mere beauty a secondary considera- tion. But Kate had both. She called her son, and he lounged forward from his place by the fire, his hands in the pockets of his shooting coat, his fair, vacuous face, and pale, watery eyes, and short, ungraceful figure looking at their very worst in contrast to the beauty and taste of his sur- roundings. ‘‘How do?—very pleased, I’m shaw,” he drawled as he put out a languid hand in greeting. Kate’s eyes flashed one sweeping, comprehensive glance at him—a glance that somehow startled and mesmerised even his tepid powers of admiration into sudden warmth and wonder. ‘* By Jove!” he muttered to himself, falling back a step or two, and keeping his eyes fixed on Kate in a bewildered stare, ‘‘ what a doosid fine gal! By Jove! beats Belle Beverley and Flossie Gaylark into fits! By Jove ! she does.” Kate took no further notice of him, but chatted pleasantly and frankly with Lady Jocelyn, who pos- sessed that rare gift of putting people at once at their ease that is invaluable to a hostess. She was not impressed agreeably by the pale, un- wholesome face, the nervous lips, and stable-yard manners of Sir Wilfred. Cornelius O’Brien, however, fastened at once upon COMicloe (Sri C QO)