rosewood, which stood on a side-table:
everything--including the carpet and curtains--looked at once well worn
and well saved.
Mr. St. John--sitting as still as one of the dusty pictures on the walls,
keeping his eyes fixed on the page he perused, and his lips mutely
sealed--was easy enough to examine. Had he been a statue instead of a
man, he could not have been easier. He was young--perhaps from twenty-
eight to thirty--tall, slender; his face riveted the eye; it was like a
Greek face, very pure in outline: quite a straight, classic nose; quite
an Athenian mouth and chin. It is seldom, indeed, an English face comes
so near the antique models as did his. He might well be a little shocked
at the irregularity of my lineaments, his own being so harmonious. His
eyes were large and blue, with brown lashes; his high forehead,
colourless as ivory, was partially streaked over by careless locks of
fair hair.
This is a gentle delineation, is it not, reader? Yet he whom it
describes scarcely impressed one with the idea of a gentle, a yielding,
an impressible, or even of a placid nature. Quiescent as he now sat,
there was something about his nostril, his mouth, his brow, which, to my
perceptions, indicated elements within either restless, or hard, or
eager. He did not speak to me one word, nor even direct to me one
glance, till his sisters returned. Diana, as she passed in and out, in
the course of preparing tea, brought me a little cake, baked on the top
of the oven.
"Eat that now," she said: "you must be hungry. Hannah says you have had
nothing but some gruel since breakfast."
I did not refuse it, for my appetite was awakened and keen. Mr. Rivers
now closed his book, approached the table, and, as he took a seat, fixed
his blue pictorial-looking eyes full on me. There was an unceremonious
directness, a searching, decided steadfastness in his gaze now, which
told that intention, and not diffidence, had hitherto kept it averted
from the stranger.
"You are very hungry," he said.
"I am, sir." It is my way--it always was my way, by instinct--ever to
meet the brief with brevity, the direct with plainness.
"It is well for you that a low fever has forced you to abstain for the
last three days: there would have been danger in yielding to the cravings
of your appetite at first. Now you may eat, though still not
immoderately."
"I trust I shall not eat long at your expense, sir," was my very clumsily-
contri
|