As her father talked Miss Ffrench joined in but seldom. She listened and looked on in a manner of which Haworth was conscious from first to last. The thought made its way into his mind, finally, that she looked on as if these matters did not touch her at all and she was only faintly curious about them. Her eyes rested on him with a secret air of watchful interest; he met them more than once as he looked up and she did not turn them away. He sat through it all, full of vengeful resentment, and was at once wretched and happy, in spite of it and himself.
When, at her father's request, she played and sang, he sat apart moody and yet full of clumsy rapture. He knew nothing of the music, but his passion found a tongue in it, nevertheless. If she had played badly he would have taken the lack of harmony for granted, but as she played well he experienced a pleasure, while he did not comprehend.
When it was all over and he found himself out alone in the road in the dark, he was feverish still.
"I don't seem to have made naught at th' first sight," he said. Then he added with dogged exultation, "But I don't look for smooth sailing. I know enough for that. I've seen her and been nigh her, and that's worth setting down—with a chap like me."
At the end of the week a carriage drove up to the gate-way of the Works, and Mr. Ffrench and his daughter descended from it. Mr. Ffrench was in the best of humors; he was in his element as he expatiated upon the size and appointments of the place. He had been expatiating upon them during the whole of the drive.
On their being joined by Haworth himself, Miss Ffrench decided inwardly that here upon his own domain he was not so wholly objectionable as she had fancied at first—even that he was deserving of a certain degree of approval. Despite the signs of elated excitement, her quick eye detected at once that he was more at his ease. His big frame did not look out of place; he moved as if he was at home, and upon the whole his rough air of authority and the promptness with which his commands were obeyed did not displease her.
"He is master," she said to herself.
She was fond of power and liked the evidence of it in others. She did not object to the looks the men, who were at work, cast upon her as she went from one department to another. Her beauty had never yet failed to command masculine homage from all ranks. The great black fellows at the furnaces exchanged comments as she passed. They would have paused in their work to look at her if they had dared. The object of their admiration bore it calmly; it neither confounded nor touched her; it did not move her at all.
Mr. Ffrench commented, examined and explained with delightful eloquence.
"We are fortunate in timing our visit so well," he said to his daughter. "They are filling an immense order for the most important railroad in the country. On my honor, I would rather be at the head of such a gigantic establishment than sit on the throne of England! But where is this protégé of yours?" he said to Haworth at last. "I should like above all things to see him."