"Whom you are very pleased and glad to take money from, who has treated me with every kindness and respect and gave way at once to my wishes, though they were opposed to his own. Yes, a common old man, but generous and kind and good and—and I could wish, I could wish that my father was as fine a gentleman!" And with a stately curtsey, she left him.
"Well, I'll be damned!" His Lordship said in utter amazement.
CHAPTER XII
THE HANDS OF ABRAM LESTWICK
"You've got my wishes, Abram, you have!" said Mrs. Hanson.
He nodded. "I know," he said gloomily.
Abram Lestwick was of that curious, foreign type that one comes on unexpectedly in our English country villages. He was about thirty-two years of age, five feet nine in height and of a strong wiry build. His complexion was swarthy, the skin sallow and drawn with a strange suggestion of tightness, over the high and prominent cheek bones. The eyes were small, black and very bright and deeply set beneath heavy brows. No razor had ever touched the lower part of his face, which was covered with a thin and straggling growth of coarse black hair, that could scarcely be described as a "beard," for so thinly and far apart did the hairs grow that the contour of a weak chin was clearly visible.
The whole appearance of the man suggested nervous unquiet and restlessness, which particularly found expression in the constant agitation of his hands. He had a restless, nervous habit of fingering things within his reach.
At this moment he was sitting on the one "easy" chair at Mrs. Hanson's little parlour. He had dragged down the antimacassar that usually adorned the chair back and was plucking at the threads and rolling the edge of it into a tight curl. Mrs. Hanson watched his face; she did not look at his hands. There was something hateful about Abram Lestwick's hands, the fingers were long, flexible and thin, save at the ends, where they suddenly thickened out and flattened in a strange, unsightly manner. But it was their restlessness, their never ceasing movement that was so remarkable. Never for a moment were they still.
Mrs. Hanson, favouring the young man, yet knew she hated his hands!