The orderly, geometrical march of the constellations from the
extreme eastern horizon across the meridian and down to the west has
a solemn majesty, which is only partially discernible when their
course is interrupted by broken country.
On a dark afternoon in November 1844, two young women, Clara and
Madge Hopgood, were playing chess in the back parlour of their
mother's house at Fenmarket, just before tea. Clara, the elder, was
about five-and-twenty, fair, with rather light hair worn flat at the
side of her face, after the fashion of that time. Her features were
tolerably regular. It is true they were somewhat marred by an uneven
nasal outline, but this was redeemed by the curved lips of a mouth
which was small and rather compressed, and by a definite, symmetrical
and graceful figure. Her eyes were grey, with a curious peculiarity
in them. Ordinarily they were steady, strong eyes, excellent and
renowned optical instruments. Over and over again she had detected,
along the stretch of the Eastthorpe road, approaching visitors, and
had named them when her companions could see nothing but specks.
Occasionally, however, these steady, strong, grey eyes utterly
changed. They were the same eyes, the same colour, but they ceased
to be mere optical instruments and became instruments of expression,
transmissive of radiance to such a degree that the light which was
reflected from them seemed insufficient to account for it.
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