She stood in a low doorway leading off to another part of the house, with one hand folded tensely over the other at the level of her waist. She was tall—she had to stoop a little in the doorway—and markedly slender, and her skin was pinkly pale, the color of skimmed milk into which had been mixed a single drop of blood. Her face was like that of a Madonna by one of the lesser Old Masters, with dark eyes and a long sharp nose with a little bump at the tip. She wore a beige cardigan and a calf-length gray skirt that hung a little crookedly on her hips, which were no broader than a boy’s.
