“What is the matter?” I cried. “Are you ill? Shall I call any one?”
She raised her head and looked at me, motioning me to sit down with a little wave of her hand. Evidently the storm had affected her nerves. Her face was paler than ever save where her clenched fingers seemed to have cut into her cheeks and left red livid marks on either side. Her dark eyes were unnaturally bright and dry. She had lost that dignified serenity of manner which had first impressed me.
“No; please sit down,” she said, softly. “I am all right—only very foolish. That last crash was too awful. It was silly of me to mind, though. I have seen worse storms. It is a sign of advancing age, I suppose.”
I laughed. She was still regarding me fixedly.
“So we are neighbors, Miss Ffolliot?” she remarked.
“Close ones,” I answered. “There is only a little belt of trees between us.”
“I might have guessed who you were,” she said. “For the moment, though, it did not occur to me. You are not,” she said, with a faint smile, “at all what one looks for in a country clergyman’s daughter.”
“I have lived abroad nearly all my life,” I said. “I was at school in Berlin and Heidelberg. My sister has always been my father’s helper. I am afraid that parish work does not appeal to me at all.”
“I am not surprised at that,” she answered. “One needs a special disposition to interest one’s self in those things, and, without being a physiognomist, I can tell you that you have not got it.”