"Hear me a moment," he presently said. "My errand affects—" He paused briefly and looked at her with a slightly different expression, as if determining how far to trust her; but he uttered no confidence. "Come, Miss," he at last finished, "if you don't admit me you—your mother—your brother—your brother, eh?—will suffer for it."
Still inflexibly barring the entrance: "Do you mean that your errand concerns Clay?" she asked. Unconsciously, a note of anxiety had crept into her voice, which, in spite of his deafness, Slade caught, and he was quick to take advantage of it.
Doubtfully, still a little bewildered, but her hostility for this man not in the least abated, she stepped aside at last, and coldly bade him to enter. She placed the lamp upon a table in the tiny hall. "Wait here," she enjoined, briefly, without offering him a seat, and so left him.
Charlotte Fairchild was one of those very tall women, with whom we rarely meet, who are not awkward. Instead, when she walked every movement seemed to flow in graceful ripples from feet to shoulders, beginning without abruptness and dying gradually away like the wavelets on the surface of a disturbed pond. A couplet of Herrick's pictures her:
"Then, then (methinks), how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes."
And yet her step was firm and swift, giving her a bearing exquisitely impressive.
Her hands and feet were beautifully formed, long, slender, and tapering, as becomes a tall woman; and her voice was one of those rich, liquid contraltos, always effective because always subdued. It was in accord with her habitual repose; but it hinted at unlimited possibilities of elemental strength, and the presence of many and varied forces behind her calm exterior.
Her command to Mr. Slade was imperative, and he stood uncertainly watching her as she walked down the hall. At its end she opened a door, and even the man's faulty hearing could catch the high, impatient voice in the room beyond; a voice which had an odd effect upon him, too, for the lean, irascible visage actually brightened, and a light very like eagerness shot from the jetty eyes.
"Child, who was it?" the voice was saying. "What kept you so long? Is there any news of—" And the door closed again.
Mr. Slade was obliged to stand there many minutes, fingering his rusty felt hat, before Charlotte reappeared and, with a single queenly gesture, beckoned him to approach. But when he finally advanced into the room, Mrs. Fairchild, paralyzed from the waist down, might have been a chatelaine, and he the overseer, the steward, seeking audience on affairs concerning the estate. So did the inherent and ineradicable traits of relative breeding naturally and unconsciously manifest themselves. Although he had secured the coveted admission, the manner of his reception was undoubtedly discouraging to his purpose. Mrs. Fairchild's first words and her mien were a further check to approaching his object.