"Don't know, my dear, but a vastly agreeable young man, very superior to those of his own age of the present day. He is marvellously polite, and has, I think, quite a superior air."
"Quite," says Penelope, "and a very sweet expression besides,—so open, so ingenuous. I wish all were like him." This with a sigh, Terence having proved himself open to suspicion with regard to plain dealing during the past few days.
Now, it so happens that at this instant they turn a corner leading from the shrubbery walk on to the gravel sweep before the hall door; as they turn this corner, so does some one else, only he is coming from the gravel sweep to the walk, so that consequently he is face to face with the Misses Blake without any hope of retreat.
The walk is narrow at the entrance to it, and as the newcomer essays to pass hurriedly by Miss Priscilla he finds himself fatally entangled with her, she having gone to the right as he went to the left, and afterwards having gone to the left as he went to the right, and so on.
Finally a passage is cleared, and the stranger—who is an amazingly ugly old man, with a rather benign though choleric countenance—speeds past the Misses Blake like a flash of lightning, and with a haste creditable to his years, but suggestive rather of fear than elasticity.
"My uncle?" says Brian Desmond, in an awestruck tone, to Monica, who literally goes down before the terrible annunciation, and trembles visibly.
It is a rencontre fraught with mortal horror to the Misses Blake. For years they have not so much as looked upon their enemy's face, and now their skirts have actually brushed him as he passed.
"Come, come quickly, Monica," says Miss Penelope, on this occasion being the one to take the initiative. "Do not linger, child. Do you not see? It was our enemy that passed by."
If she had said "it was the arch fiend," her voice could not have been more tragic.
"I am coming, Aunt Penny," says Monica, nervously.