“The primeval stillness sounds rather nice, only it isn’t still except you go up into the snow upon the peaks,” 254 he said. “In most of the other places my trail led through you can hear the rivers, and they make noise enough for anything. Now, there’s a man yonder I haven’t seen before, who, I fancy, could tell us something about it if he liked. His face suggests that he knows. I mean the one talking to Mrs. Acton.”
Violet followed his glance, and saw a man standing beside Mrs. Acton near the great English hearth; but his face was turned away from her, and it was a moment or two before he looked round. Then she started, and the blood crept into her cheeks as she met Nasmyth’s gaze.
He had changed since she last saw him––changed, she felt, in an almost disconcerting fashion. He wore plain city clothes, and they hung about him with a suggestive slackness. His face was darkened and roughened by exposure to the winter winds; it had grown sharp and stern, and there was a disfiguring red scar down one side of it. His eyes were keen and intent, and there was a look in them that she did not remember having noticed before, while he seemed to have lost his careless gracefulness of manner. Even his step seemed different as he moved towards her. It was, though neither exactly understood why, a difficult moment for both of them when he stopped close by her side, and it was made no easier by the fact that they were not alone. Violet turned to her companion, who rose.
“Mr. Carshalton, from the Old Country,” she said. “This is Mr. Nasmyth.”
Carshalton nodded. “Glad to meet you. Won’t you sit down?” he said. “As it happens, I had just pointed you out to Miss Hamilton. We were talking about the wilderness––or, to be more precise, the great primeval stillness. I ventured to suggest that you could tell us something about it.”
Nasmyth smiled significantly. “Well,” he replied, “I 255 have certainly spent a few months in the wilderness. That is one of the results.”
He meant to indicate the hand that hung by his side in a thick, soft glove by the gesture he made, but it was the other one that Violet and Carshalton glanced at. It was scarred and battered, and had opened in raw red cracks under the frost.
“Ah!” said Carshalton, “I think I was quite warranted in assuring Miss Hamilton that it was a good deal nicer here. You see, I was up in the ranges for a week or two. I had to come down with my comrade, who sat out one night in the snow. The primeval stillness didn’t agree with him.”
He met Violet’s eyes, and next moment glanced across the room.
“I don’t think I’ve spoken to Mr. Acton this evening,” he said. “We’ll have a talk about the wilderness by-and-by, Mr. Nasmyth.”