re stood a small short
man, with his hands behind him; near him was Miss Searle, so transformed
by her dress that at first I scarcely knew her. There was in our
entrance and reception something remarkably chilling and solemn. We
moved in silence up the long room; Mr. Searle advanced slowly, a dozen
steps, to meet us; his sister stood motionless. I was conscious of her
masking her visage with a large white tinselled fan, and that her eyes,
grave and enlarged, watched us intently over the top of it. The master
of Lackley grasped in silence the proffered hand of his kinsman and eyed
him from head to foot, suppressing, I noted, a start of surprise at his
resemblance to Sir Joshua's portrait. "This is a happy day." And then
turning to me with an odd little sharp stare: "My cousin's friend is my
friend." Miss Searle lowered her fan.

The first thing that struck me in Mr. Searle's appearance was his very
limited stature, which was less by half a head than that of his sister.
The second was the preternatural redness of his hair and beard. They
intermingled over his ears and surrounded his head like a huge lurid
nimbus. His face was pale and attenuated, the face of a scholar, a
dilettante, a comparer of points and texts, a man who lives in a library
bending over books and prints and medals. At a distance it might have
passed for smooth and rather blankly composed; but on a nearer view
it revealed a number of wrinkles, sharply etched and scratched, of a
singularly aged and refined effect. It was the complexion of a man of
sixty. His nose was arched and delicate, identical almost with the nose
of my friend. His eyes, large and deep-set, had a kind of auburn glow,
the suggestion of a keen metal red-hot--or, more plainly, were full
of temper and spirit. Imagine this physiognomy--grave and solemn,
grotesquely solemn, in spite of the bushy brightness which made a sort
of frame for it--set in motion by a queer, quick, defiant, perfunctory,
preoccupied smile, and you will have an imperfect notion of the
remarkable presence of our host; something better worth seeing and
knowing, I perceived as I quite breathlessly took him in, than anything
we had yet encountered. How thoroughly I had entered into sympathy
with my poor picked-up friend, and how effectually I had associated my
sensibilities with his own, I had not suspected till, within the short
five minutes before the signal for dinner, I became aware, without his
giving me the least hi