Mr. Brumley's interest in Lady Harman was to be almost too crowded by detail before that impulsive¹ call was over. Superposed upon the mystery of the mushroom shed was the vivid illumination of Lady Harman by her mother and sister. They had an effect of having reluctantly become her social inferiors for her own good; the mother—her name he learnt was Mrs. Sawbridge—had all Lady Harman's tall slenderness, but otherwise resembled her only in the poise² of her neck and an occasional gesture; she was fair and with a kind of ignoble³ and premeditated refinement⁴ in her speech and manner. She was dressed with the restraint of a prolonged and attenuated⁵ widowhood, in a rich and complicatedly quiet dress of mauve and grey. She was obviously a transitory visitor and not so much taking the opulence⁶ about her and particularly the great butler for granted as pointedly⁷ and persistently⁸ ignoring it in an effort to seem to take it for granted. The sister, on the other hand, had Lady Harman's pale darkness but none of her fineness of line. She missed altogether that quality of fineness. Her darkness was done with a quite perceptible heaviness, her dignity passed into solidity and her profile was, with an entire want of hesitation⁹, handsome. She was evidently the elder by a space of some years and she was dressed with severity in grey.