ed head bending over
the table as though searching for something, and the ruddy firelight
reflected the broad shoulders and hairless profile of the obnoxious Mr.
Hamilton.

My first idea was to escape, and my fingers were already on the
door-handle, when he turned abruptly and saw me. 'I beg your pardon,'
coming towards me and speaking in the deep peculiar voice I had already
heard. 'I was hunting for the matches that Cunliffe always mislays. You
are Miss Garston, are you not? I was told to expect you.' And then he
actually shook hands with me in an off-hand way.

I am not generally devoid of presence of mind, but at that moment I
behaved as awkwardly as a school-girl. If I could only have thought of
some excuse for leaving him,--an errand or a message to Mrs. Drabble; but
no form of words would occur to me. I could only mutter an apology for my
abrupt entrance, and ask after Uncle Max, stammering with confusion all
the time, and then take the chair he was placing for me, while he renewed
his search for the match-box.

'Oh, Cunliffe has only gone down to the village to post his letters: he
will be back in a few minutes. Ah! here are the matches. Now we shall be
able to see each other.' And he coolly lighted Uncle Max's reading-lamp
and two candles, and stirred the fire with such a vigorous hand that the
huge lump of coal splintered into fragments.

'There; I do like a mighty blaze. Take that newspaper, Miss Garston, if
the flame scorches your face. I know young ladies are afraid of their
complexions.' Why need he have said that, as though my brown skin were
Sara's pretty pink cheeks? 'Why do you not throw off your wraps if the
room be too hot?' And he spoke so imperatively that I actually obeyed
him, and got rid of my hat and ulster, which he deposited on the couch.

I did not like the look of Mr. Hamilton any better than I had liked it
yesterday. His dark, smoothly-shaven face was not to my taste; it looked
stern and forbidding. He had a low forehead, and there was a hard set
look about the mouth, and the eyes were almost disagreeable in their
keenness.

Perhaps I was prejudiced, but he looked to me like a man who rarely
laughed, and who would take a pleasure in saying bitter things; his voice
was not unpleasant, but it had a peculiar depth in it, and now and then
there was an odd break in it that was almost a hesitation.

'Well,' he said, looking full at me, but, I was sure, not in the least
wishful to set me