f being able to laugh at him, we found something
oppressive, chilling, to me frightful, in the cold, sneering smile which
seemed perpetually hovering about his thin lips--in the fixed, snaky
glitter of his still, intent gray eyes. His face was pale, his manners
were polished, but to meet his eye was a thing I hated, and the touch of
his hand made me shudder. While speaking in the politest possible
manner, he had eyed over Adelaide and me in a manner which I do not
think either of us had ever experienced before. I hated him from the
moment in which I saw him looking at me with expression of approval. To
be approved by Sir Peter Le Marchant, could fate devise anything more
horrible? Yes, I knew now that it could; one might have to submit to the
approval, to live in the approval. I had expressed my opinion on the
subject with freedom to Adelaide, who to my surprise had not agreed
with me, and had told me coldly that I had no business to speak
disrespectfully of my father's visitors. I was silenced, but unhappy.
From the first moment of seeing Sir Peter, I had felt an uncomfortable,
uneasy feeling, which, had I been sentimental, I might have called a
presentiment, but I was not sentimental. I was a healthy young girl of
seventeen, believing in true love, and goodness, and gentleness very
earnestly; "fancy free," having read few novels, and heard no gossip--a
very baby in many respects. Our home might be a quiet one, a poor one, a
dull one--our circle of acquaintance small, our distractions of the most
limited description imaginable, but at least we knew no evil, and--I
speak for Stella and myself--thought none. Our father and mother were
persons with nothing whatever remarkable about them. Both had been
handsome. My mother was pretty, my father good-looking yet. I loved them
both dearly. It had never entered my head to do otherwise than love
them, but the love which made the star and the poetry of my quiet and
unromantic life was that I bore to Adelaide, my eldest sister. I
believed in her devotedly, and accepted her judgment, given in her own
peculiar proud, decided way, upon every topic on which she chose to
express it. She was one-and-twenty, and I used to think I could lay down
my life for her.

It was consequently a shock to me to hear her speak in praise--yes, in
praise of Sir Peter Le Marchant. My first impulse was to distrust my own
judgment, but no; I could not long do so. He was repulsive; he was
stealthy, hard, c