The House on the Marsh by Florence Warden

I was down in the dining-room the next morning, with the unfailing punctuality of a new-comer, at the sound of the breakfast-bell, before any one else was there. Mr. Rayner came in in a few minutes, handsome, cheerful, but rather preoccupied; and I was listening to his bright small-talk with the polite stranger's smile, when I discovered, without having heard any sound, that Mrs. Rayner was in the room. She had glided in like a ghost, and, without more interest in the life around her than a ghost might show, she was standing at the table, waiting. I was thankful to see that there was no trace in her eyes now of the steadfast eager gaze which had disconcerted me on the night before, nothing but the limpest indifference to me in the way in which she held out her hand when her husband introduced me.

"She must have been pretty ten years ago," I thought, as I looked at her thin face, with the fair faded complexion and dull gray eyes. There was a gentleness about her which would have been grace still, if she had taken any pains to set off by a little womanly coquetry her slim girl-like figure, small thin hands, and the masses of long brown hair which were carelessly and unbecomingly dragged away from her forehead and twisted up on her head.