“Julia, my dear, never mind that beef. I haven’t said grace yet. Here’s Anthony.”
“Glad to see him, I am sure,” said Mrs. Walrond, her eyes still fixed upon the beef, which was obviously burnt at one corner. Then with a shrug, for she was accustomed to such accidents, she rose to greet him.
Mrs. Walrond was a tall and extremely good-looking lady of about fifty-five, dark-eyed and bright complexioned, whose chestnut hair was scarcely touched with grey. Notwithstanding all the troubles and hardships that she had endured, her countenance was serene and even happy, for she was blessed with a good heart, a lively faith in Providence, and a well-regulated mind. Looking at her, it was easy to see whence Barbara and her other daughters inherited their beauty and air of breeding.
“How are you, Anthony?” she went on, one eye still fixed upon the burnt beef. “It is good of you to come, though you are late, which I suppose is why the girl has burnt the meat.”
“Not a bit,” called out one of the children, it was Janey, “it is very good of us to have him when there’s only one duck. Anthony, you mustn’t eat duck, as we don’t often get one and you have hundreds.”
“Not I, dear, I hate ducks,” he relied automatically, for his eyes were seeking the face of Barbara.
Barbara was seated in the wooden armchair with a cushion on it, near the fire of driftwood, advantages that were accorded to her in honour of her still being an invalid. Even to a stranger she would have looked extraordinarily sweet with her large and rather plaintive violet eyes over which the long black lashes curved, her waving chestnut hair parted in the middle and growing somewhat low upon her forehead, her tall figure, very thin just now, and her lovely shell-like complexion heightened by a blush.
To Anthony she seemed a very angel, an angel returned from the shores of death for his adoration and delight. Oh! if things had gone the other way—if there had been no sweet Barbara seated in that wooden chair! The thought gripped his heart with a hand of ice; he felt as he had felt when he looked at the window-place from the crest of Gunter’s Hill. But she had come back, and he was sure that they were each other’s for life. And yet, and yet, life must end one day and then, what? Once more that hand of ice dragged at his heart strings.
In a moment it was all over and Mr. Walrond was speaking.
“Why don’t you bid Barbara good-day, Anthony?” he asked. “Don’t you think she looks well, considering? We do, better than you, in fact,” he added, glancing at his face, which had suddenly grown pale, almost grey.