Mrs. Andrews did not want her to go--she stayed at least ten minutes,
standing ready to depart. As she went down the stairs, the servant
passed through the hall, and she heard him announce dinner to his
master, who promptly came in from the piazza, by which means, he and
Missy were brought face to face in the hall near the dining-room door.
Mr. Andrews probably felt, but did not express any astonishment at
seeing a strange young lady in white muslin, without even the
conventionality of a hat upon her head, walking about his temporary
castle; he merely bowed, and, being very hungry, went into the
dining-room to get his dinner. As for Missy, she felt it was very
awkward, and she was also full of resentment. She inclined her head in
the slightest manner, and only glanced at him to see whether he was
remarkable-looking, and whether he had any right to be a tyrant and a
brute. It takes a very handsome man to have any such right as that, and
Mr. Andrews was by no means handsome. He was not tall--rather a short
man, and almost a stout man. Not that exactly, but still not as slight
as he ought to have been for his height. He was not young
either--certainly forty possibly more. He had blue eyes, and hair and
whiskers of light brown. The expression of his face was rather stern. He
was evidently thinking of something that gave him no pleasure when he
looked up and saw Missy, and there was perhaps nothing in the sight of
her that induced him to cast the shadow from his brow. So she did not
see that he had a good smile, and that his eyes were particularly
intelligent and keen. She hurried past him with the settled belief that
he was a monster of cruelty; the odor of the soup, which was
particularly good, and the sound of the chair upon the floor as it was
pushed up before the lonely table, and the clinking of a glass were
added touches to the dark picture.
"I suppose he hasn't given her a thought," she said to herself, as the
gate shut after her. "Dinner, imagine it, comes first. He looks like a
gourmand; he _is_ a gourmand, I am sure. That soup was perfectly
delicious; I wish I had the receipt for it. But he is worse than a
gourmand. Gourmands are often good-natured. He is a tyrant, and I hate
him. Think of the misery of that poor young thing! How could she have
married him? I would give worlds to know her history. _He_ isn't capable
of a history. I suppose she must have been very poor, and forced into
the marriage by her parents. Nothing else can account for such a
_mésalliance_."
When she entered the parlor, St. John was sitting by his mother's sofa.
"How is our young friend?" he said. "Remember I saved his life; so don't
put on any airs because you got him to go home."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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