He came up the path with his easy saunter. She knew it for the step of a man of the world. None of the village men walked thus—with this particular species of leisurely decision, unhurried assurance. He strolled between the line of hollyhocks and sunflowers and spied her by the window.
“Ah! Hullo! May I come in this way?”
He stepped over the low sill into the room. It was growing dusk. The air was extraordinarily sweet.
“There’s a mist on the moors to-night,” he said. “Can you smell it?”
“Yes,” said Frances.
She gave him no word of greeting. Somehow the occasion was too unconventional for that. Or was it merely the manner of his entrance—the supreme confidence of his intimacy with her—that made conventional things impossible? He entered her presence without parley, because—obviously—he knew she would be glad to see him. The breath caught oddly in her throat. Was she glad?
The tension of her limbs passed, but she was aware of it still mentally,—a curious constraint from which she could not break free. She laid her sketches before him almost without words.
He took them and looked at them one after another with obvious interest. “You’ve got the atmosphere!” he said. “And the charm! They’re like yourself, Miss Thorold. No, it isn’t idle flattery. It’s there, but one can’t tell where it lies. Ah, what’s this?”
He was looking at the last of the pictures with an even closer interest.
“That is the little blind child at Tetherstones,” she said. “It is only an impression—not good at all. I couldn’t get the appeal of her—only the prettiness. It isn’t even finished.”