After Dark eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 503 pages of information about After Dark.

After Dark eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 503 pages of information about After Dark.

As these thoughts were passing through my mind, the door opened and the lady herself appeared.

She looked certainly past the prime of life; longer past it, as I afterward discovered, than she really was.  But I never remember, in any other face, to have seen so much of the better part of the beauty of early womanhood still remaining, as I saw in hers.  Sorrow had evidently passed over the fair, calm countenance before me, but had left resignation there as its only trace.  Her expression was still youthful—­youthful in its kindness and its candor especially.  It was only when I looked at her hair, that was now growing gray—­at her wan, thin hands—­at the faint lines marked round her mouth—­at the sad serenity of her eyes, that I fairly detected the mark of age; and, more than that, the token of some great grief, which had been conquered, but not banished.  Even from her voice alone—­from the peculiar uncertainty of its low, calm tones when she spoke—­it was easy to conjecture that she must have passed through sufferings, at some time of her life, which had tried to the quick the noble nature that they could not subdue.

Mr. Garthwaite and she met each other almost like brother and sister; it was plain that the friendly intimacy between them had been of very long duration.  Our visit was a short one.  The conversation never advanced beyond the commonplace topics suited to the occasion.  It was, therefore, from what I saw, and not from what I heard, that I was enabled to form my judgment of Miss Welwyn.  Deeply as she had interested me—­far more deeply than I at all know how to explain in fitting words—­I cannot say that I was unwilling to depart when we rose to take leave.  Though nothing could be more courteous and more kind than her manner toward me during the whole interview, I could still perceive that it cost her some effort to repress in my presence the shades of sadness and reserve which seemed often ready to steal over her.  And I must confess that when I once or twice heard the half-sigh stifled, and saw the momentary relapse into thoughtfulness suddenly restrained, I felt an indefinable awkwardness in my position which made me ill at ease; which set me doubting whether, as a perfect stranger, I had done right in suffering myself to be introduced where no new faces could awaken either interest or curiosity; where no new sympathies could ever be felt, no new friendships ever be formed.

As soon as we had taken leave of Miss Welwyn, and were on our way to the stream in her grounds, I more than satisfied Mr. Garthwaite that the impression the lady had produced on me was of no transitory kind, by overwhelming him with questions about her—­not omitting one or two incidental inquiries on the subject of the little girl whom I had seen at the back window.  He only rejoined that his story would answer all my questions; and that he would begin to tell it as soon as we had arrived at Glenwith Beck, and were comfortably settled to fishing.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
After Dark from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.