When, next day, the Reverend Vernon Brander arrived at the farm for luncheon, his evil star brought him before Olivia had returned from her morning walk. He was shown into the drawing-room, where, by Olivia’s orders, in honor of his coming, a fire blazed in the usually cheerless grate; for Mrs. Denison, although an indolent and extravagant housekeeper, practiced from habit a dozen uncomfortable and futile little economies, which she had learnt in her childhood’s days in her father’s small shop. On learning of the guest’s arrival, she made no haste to receive him; and Vernon was left for some time to an uninterrupted study of the room.
He decided at once, his thoughts while in this house all taking the same direction, that Olivia seldom or never sat in the room, that she did not like it, but that, nevertheless she had had something to do with the arrangement of it, and that much of the decorative work, both of needle and paint brush, with which it was adorned, was done by her active fingers. The position of each article of furniture was too coldly correct to please her, Vernon, used to the society of a woman of taste, felt sure. There was no pretty disorder of open book or music, untidy work-basket, with its picturesque overflow of feminine trifles; no disarranged cushion; no displaced chair. The piano was shut—looked even as if it might be locked; the furniture, of the pretty, modern, spindle-shanked, uncomfortable type, was evidently scarcely ever used. Vernon had time to wander about at his leisure until he found something which roused in him more than a passing interest. This was a large photographed head of Olivia, which stood by itself in a dark corner on a side table in a handsome oak frame. It had evidently been taken quite recently, and was an excellent likeness. Vernon could not resist the temptation to take it up and carry it to a window to examine it, as he could not do in the obscurity to which it had been condemned. Then, as he was still left undisturbed, he put the portrait on a centre table in the full light, and opening an album which lay not far off, began hunting for more photographs of the same girl. He found a page containing four, taken at different stages of childhood and gawky young girlhood. Going down on his knees beside the large portrait, he held open the album immediately underneath it, and began tracing out the development of the woman from the child with the deepest interest.
Absorbed, as his habit was, in the occupation of the moment, he did not hear, or did not heed, the approach of footsteps across the hall. The door had not been properly closed, and, before he could change his position, it had been thrust open with peremptory touch, and he was in the presence of his hostess.
Glancing from him to the portrait on the table, and thence to the book in his hand, Mrs. Denison saw or guessed how he was employed, and feminine jealousy and dislike increased the horror and indignation she was nursing against this homicidal clergyman whom her husband had chosen to exalt at the expense of her own chosen divines. She stood with a stony and most unwelcoming face while Vernon, rising hastily with a bright laugh, shut the album, and came forward to meet her.
But she put forward no cordial hand, and vouchsafed him only the coldest little nod of the head. Vernon mistook the reason of this reception, confounding the step-mother with the mother, and supposing that his hostess was in arms at the liberty he had taken in thus openly worshipping at the young girl’s shrine.
“I must apologize for my attitude of apparent devotion,” he said; “but I was so much interested in tracing the development of the child as shown here,” and he held out the album, “into the woman as represented here,” and he touched the portrait on the table, “that I did not notice how unnecessarily devout my position had become.”
“Very unnecessarily,” assented Mrs. Denison, in a hard and frigid tone.
Poor Vernon looked much disconcerted by this rebuff.
“I hope you will believe,” he began, almost stammering in his confusion, “that I had no intention of taking a liberty in admiring your daughter’s portrait so openly——”
“My step-daughter’s!” interrupted Mrs. Denison, with a snap.