he skull, had a pinched and
drawn look. The hair was reddish-gray, the eyes small, but deep-set
under fine brows, and the thin-lipped wrinkled mouth and long chin had a
look of hard sarcastic strength.

Generally the countenance was that of an old man, the furrows were deep,
the skin brown and shrivelled. But the alertness and force of the man's
whole expression showed that, if the body was beginning to fail, the
mind was as fresh and masterful as ever. His hair, worn rather longer
than usual, his loosely-fitting dress and slouching carriage gave him an
un-English look. In general he impressed Robert as a sort of curious
combination of the foreign _savant_ with the English grandee, for while
his manner showed a considerable consciousness of birth and social
importance, the gulf between him and the ordinary English country
gentleman could hardly have been greater, whether in points of
appearance or, as Robert very well knew, in points of social conduct.
And as Robert watched him, his thoughts flew back again to the library,
to this man's past, to all that those eyes had seen and those hands had
touched. He felt already a mysterious, almost a yearning, sense of
acquaintance with the being who had just received him with such
chilling, such unexpected, indifference.

The squire's manners, no doubt, were notorious, but even so, his
reception of the new rector of the parish, the son of a man intimately
connected for years with the place, and with his father, and to whom he
had himself shown what was for him considerable civility by letter and
message, was sufficiently startling.

Robert, however, had no time to speculate on the causes of it, for Mrs.
Darcy, released from Mr. Wynnstay, threw herself with glee on to her
longed-for prey, the young and interesting-looking rector. First of all
she cross-examined him as to his literary employments, and when by dint
of much questioning she had forced particulars from him, Robert's mouth
twitched as he watched her scuttling away from the subject, seized
evidently with internal terrors lest she should have precipitated
herself beyond hope of rescue into the jaws of the sixth century. Then
with a view to regaining the lead and opening another and more promising
vein, she asked him his opinion of Lady Selden's last novel, _Love in a
Marsh_; and when he confessed ignorance she paused a moment, fork in
hand, her small wrinkled face looking almost as bewildered as when,
three minutes be