Arctic regions -- Discovery and exploration -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
Breakfast had been laid in what the doctor spoke of as the glass-room.
This was an enclosed veranda, one side being of glass and opening by
French windows directly upon a little lawn that sloped away under the
apple-trees to the road. It was a charming apartment, an idea of a
sister of Dr. Pitts, who at one time had spent two years at Medford.
Lloyd breakfasted here alone, and it was here that Bennett found her.
The one public carriage of Medford, a sort of four-seated carryall, that
met all the trains at the depot, had driven to the gate at the foot of
the yard, and had pulled up, the horses reeking and blowing. Even before
it had stopped, a tall, square-shouldered man had alighted, but it was
not until he was half-way up the gravel walk that Lloyd had recognised
him. Bennett caught sight of her at the same moment, and strode swiftly
across the lawn and came into the breakfast-room by one of the open
French windows. At once the room seemed to shrink in size; his first
step upon the floor--a step that was almost a stamp, so eager it was, so
masterful and resolute--set the panes of glass jarring in their frames.
Never had Bennett seemed more out of place than in this almost dainty
breakfast-room, with its small, feminine appurtenances, its fragile
glassware, its pots of flowers and growing plants. The incongruous
surroundings emphasized his every roughness, his every angularity.
Against its background of delicate, mild tints his figure loomed
suddenly colossal; the great span of his chest and shoulders seemed
never so huge. His face; the great, brutal jaw, with its aggressive,
bullying, forward thrust; the close-gripped lips, the contracted
forehead, the small eyes, marred with the sharply defined cast, appeared
never so harsh, never so massive, never so significant of the
resistless, crude force of the man, his energy, his overpowering
determination. As he towered there before her, one hand gripped upon a
chair-back, it seemed to her that the hand had but to close to crush the
little varnished woodwork to a splinter, and when he spoke Lloyd could
imagine that the fine, frail china of the table vibrated to the
deep-pitched bass of his voice.
Lloyd had only to look at him once to know that Bennett was at the
moment aroused and agitated to an extraordinary degree. His face was
congested and flaming. Under his frown his eyes seemed flashing
veritable sparks; his teeth were set; in his temple a vein stood
prominent and throbbing. But Lloyd was not surprised. Bennett had, no
doubt, heard of Ferriss's desperate illness. Small wonder he was excited
when the life of his dearest friend was threatened. Lloyd could ignore
her own quarrel with Bennett at such a moment.
"I am so sorry," she began, "that you could not have known sooner. But
you remember you left no address. There was--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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