"Aye," said he outwardly, "you'll be keeping a very quiet house here."
"You may almost call it a religious house," said Hutchins, taking the measure of his man. "Family prayer every Sunday in the dining-room for all who likes. Yes," he added, rubbing his hand on his lame knee, "Canadians are pious for the most part, Mr. Bates, and I have the illeet of two cities on my balconies."
Other men came in and went out of the room. Women in summer gowns passed the door. Still Bates and Hutchins talked.
At last, because Bates waited long enough, Eliza passed the door, and catching sight of him, she turned, suddenly staring as if she knew not exactly what she was doing. There were two men at the bar drinking. Hutchins, from his high swivel chair, was waiting upon them. They both looked at Eliza; and now Bates, trembling in every nerve, felt only a weak fear lest she should turn upon him in wrath for being unfaithful, and summoned all his strength to show her that by the promise with which he had bound himself he would abide. He looked at her as though in very truth he had never seen her before. And the girl took his stony look as if he had struck her, and fell away from the door, so that they saw her no longer.
"Looked as if she'd seen someone she knew in here," remarked Hutchins, complacently. He was always pleased when people noticed Eliza, for he considered her a credit to the house.
The others made no remark, and Bates felt absurdly glad that he had seen her, not that it advanced his desire, but yet he was glad; and he had shown her, too, that she need not fear him.
And Eliza—she went on past the door to the verandah, and stood in sight of the boarders, who were there, in sight of the open street; but she did not see anyone or anything. She was too common a figure at that door to be much noticed, but if anyone had observed her it would have been seen that she was standing stolidly, not taking part in what was before her, but that her white face, which never coloured prettily like other women's, bore now a deepening tint, as if some pale torturing flame were lapping about her; there was something on her face that suggested the quivering of flames.
In a few minutes she went back into the bar-room.
"Mr. Hutchins," she said, and here followed a request, that was almost a command, that he should attend to something needing his oversight in the stable-yard.
Hutchins grumbled, apologised to Bates; but Eliza stood still, and he went. She continued to stand, and her attitude, her forbidding air, the whole atmosphere of her presence, was such that the two men who were on the eve of departure went some minutes before they otherwise would have done, though perhaps they hardly knew why they went.