“Lor’, Miss Mabin, I never thought of that!” cried poor Langford, turning quite white.
She had evidently entertained faint suspicions of her own, for at this suggestion she was about to fly into the house in search of the new-comer, and perhaps to brand him as an impostor, when Mabin, smiling at her alarm, caught hold of her to detain her.
“No, no, you silly girl. Of course it’s all right. It’s sure to be all right. He’s probably eccentric, that’s all. Doesn’t he look the kind of person you would expect?”
“Oh, yes, Miss Mabin, he’s every inch a gentleman. But—” She hesitated, apparently unable to put into appropriate words the impression the new tenant had made upon her.
“But what?”
“He is rather—rather strange-looking. I—I think he looks as if he wouldn’t live long. His face has a sort of gray look, as if— Well, Miss Mabin, it’s a queer thing to say, but he looks to me half-scared.”
“Mad?” suggested Mabin, more with her lips and eyebrows than with her voice.
Langford nodded emphatically.
“Oh, dear!”
Then Mabin was silent, trying to recollect all that she had heard in the family circle about the gentleman who was so anxious to take the house. And she found that it did not amount to much. A rich man, a bachelor, of quiet habits, who disliked unnecessary fuss and noise, and whose references Mr. Rose’s lawyer had declared to be unimpeachable—this was the sum of the family knowledge of Mr. Banks.