"Pray don't say so. I am sure we are delighted to see you!" exclaimed Clare, effusively. "I am Mrs. Vandeleur's niece, and my name is Cavan. Any friend or relation of Mr. Armstrong's is extremely welcome here. Isn't that so, Lina dear?"
Laline did not respond. A combination between Clare and this man suggested all manner of vague dangers. She longed to quit the room, and yet feared to leave them alone together lest they should discuss her and make she knew not what discovery thereby. Meanwhile Clare was flitting about, ringing the bell for the lamp and chattering gaily to her aunt's visitor, apparently bent upon putting him at his ease.
"Detestable weather to-day, isn't it, Mr. Armstrong? This fog is so fearfully depressing! And I have been calling on a family, half of whom were down with the influenza and the other half deadly afraid of catching it. London on a foggy Sunday afternoon is a most ghastly place, isn't it? I like church, but I do hate church bells! In the country—across meadows and all that sort of thing—they sound musical and soothing; but in town they are most funereal and out of tune with other sounds, and always suggest that one will be late, and that one's glove-buttons will come off at the last minute, and one will walk into church after the service has begun all red and perspiring and plain! And that's an awful ordeal!"
The lamp was brought in during the foregoing speech, and by its light, toned down by the amber silk-shade which veiled it, Wallace Armstrong the elder gazed curiously at the two other occupants of the room. Laline had resumed her usual low seat by the fire, but it was not to her that his glance was at first directed. Clare Cavan stood immediately before him, and his bold eyes ran approvingly over the voluptuous curves of her figure, the dead whiteness of her skin, and the red and yellow lights in her untidy coil of hair. Her white eyelids and pale lashes were lowered to all appearance modestly under his scrutiny, but out of the corners of her eyes she too was taking stock of him.
What she saw was by no means wholly pleasing. Even by the subdued light of the lamp and fire it was easy to read in this man's appearance the deterioration of his moral and physical nature. Originally handsomer than his cousin, he had at thirty years of age acquired the look of a man ten years older. His plentiful curly hair, which fell heavily over his forehead, was already streaked with gray. His cheeks were haggard and pale, contrasting with the puffiness of the skin under his eyes and about his chin and jaw, and his eyes, beautiful in shape and colour, were bloodshot and red in the lids. There was undoubtedly a strong family likeness between himself and his cousin; both men were tall, broad-shouldered, and well made, black-haired, blue-eyed, and of regular features, but there all resemblance ceased. Wallace Armstrong the elder was clearly on the downward road. His voice and manner had become coarse and rough, and the bitterness of his nature showed itself in almost every word he uttered. Especially in his allusions to his cousin did this sneering tone assert itself; and as if she perceived this and wished to ascertain the reason for it Clare led the conversation at once to the topic of the younger Wallace Armstrong.
"Now that I see you by the light," she said, "you are really very much alike. But I think your eyes have more gray about them; your cousin's are wholly blue."
"My hair has more gray about it too," he remarked, sardonically.
"Has it? I hadn't noticed that. But do you know I so much admire gray hair on young men? It is so piquant, I think! Then you are taller and bigger than the Wallace Armstrong we know; and you wear a moustache, while he is clean-shaved."
"Yes—a moustache is the one thing Lorin can't cultivate successfully," he sneered. "But he is so eminently lucky in every other respect that he ought not to mind that one deficiency."
"Then your voices are different, very different," Clare continued, standing before him with her head on one side reflectively, and speaking with the air of ingenuous innocence she knew so well how to assume. "There are just tones now and then which resemble your cousin's, but not many."