Publisher's Synopsis
Mrs. de Barryos sat beside a window overlooking a dainty rose-garden, the golden sunshine streaming over her, the balmly air lifting the soft curls of dark hair that was artistically touched with gray. Her hands were folded idly over a letter that lay in her lap-small hands that looked as if they had never known the meaning of toil, they were pale and thin, like the face of the woman to whom they belonged, for Mrs. de Barryos was an invalid. She had been pretty before her face acquired its present angles through suffering; never beautiful, but pretty in a dainty, meaningless sort of way; inoffensively pretty some people might have called her, for there was no strength in it, nor character. Her eyes were innocent, wide-open brown ones that were like those of an obedient child. Her chin was decidedly weak, and about the mouth had grown with her age a sort of querulous tremble, as if she felt that the world had used her unfairly, and wanted all mankind to sympathize with and pet her because of it.
