"Rose," he exclaimed, "Rose, how you have grown. The little girl I left behind has become quite a woman!"
"Why have you delayed so long, Rose?" said Ethel, almost with annoyance. "Did you not know who was here—that Morley had arrived?"
"No. If so, do you think I would have delayed?"
"Yet you have done so."
"Oh, don't be jealous," replied Rose, laughing, though her answer unwittingly galled Morley, and annoyed Ethel more; "we were not flirting, for the captain was only telling me about the flowers of South America; and I merely amuse myself with him and Jack Page, when I can get no one else."
Morley thought of the strange ring on Ethel's finger, and as he caressed Rose's hand, there arose some unpleasant forebodings in his mind; but at that moment, as lights were brought, and tea announced in the drawing-room, the gentleman whom they styled "captain" entered from the conservatory, throwing back therein the fag-end of his cigar.
Ethel hastened to introduce him to Morley as "Captain Cramply Hawkshaw, the son of papa's old and valued friend."
The captain bowed coldly to Morley, whom he scrutinised from head to foot in a cool and rather supercilious manner.
Hawkshaw was rather under than over the middle height, and possessed a tough and well-knit figure. He had rather a good air and bearing; but at times his manner was absurd and swaggering, and his features, though good and well cut, were decidedly sinister—so much so, that his eyes had in them, occasionally, an expression, which, to a keen observer, was most forbidding.
Under his light grey sack coat, he wore no waistcoat, but had his trousers girt by a Spanish sash; a tasselled smoking-cap, like an Egyptian tarboosh, was placed jauntily on his thick mass of curly dark hair. He rejoiced in a luxuriant beard and pair of long whiskers, with which his moustaches mingled.