Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 732 / January 5, 1878

No. 732. SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 1878. Price 1½ d.
By JOHN B. HARWOOD, Author of ‘Lady Flavia.’
‘No, my lord; I do not know him; nor, I think, does any one in the village. But during the few weeks that I have been at High Tor Churchtown, I have seen him very often indeed.’
The speaker was a young girl, of some twenty years at most. Her bearing was grave and modest, and her attire scrupulously plain; but there are cases in which sovereign beauty will assert herself, and Ethel Gray, the newly appointed school-mistress, was more than pretty. That slender form and faultless face, the dazzling purity of the complexion, and the lustre of the violet eyes, that contrasted so well with the wealth of dark hair simply braided back from the temples and twisted into a massive coil—these conferred beauty, if ever woman, since Eve's time, deserved to be called beautiful.
It was a bright balmy day in June, and through the large window of the school-room, now open, floated the scent of flowers and the hum of bees. Within the room, standing beside the teacher, were two gentlemen; while on each side of the table stood the children, their wondering eyes fixed upon the visitors. They well knew the kindly face of the gray-haired Earl of Wolverhampton, the elder of the two, whose park-gates were almost within sight of the school of which he was patron. But they had never before seen the shrewd rugged features of the middle-aged member of parliament, the Right Hon. Stephen Hammond, Under-secretary of State, by whom he was accompanied.
Ethel Gray's words had been uttered in reply to an inquiry from the Earl as to a swarthy man of sinister aspect and powerful build who was lounging near the low gate of the school-house garden.
‘That is not a face,’ said the Earl, thinking of quarter-sessions, tramps, gipsies, and poachers—‘which I am pleased to see here among my good people.—What is your opinion, Hammond, of the owner of it?’
‘I think that I had rather not meet him on a dark night,’ answered the Under-secretary with a smile. ‘But perhaps, after all, the man is only some sailor newly paid off; though he has a reckless unpleasant look in any case.’