While she still stood doubtfully upon the threshold, hesitating what to do—she little knew what a pretty picture she made in that timid, fluttering attitude—the tall man threw down his newspaper upon the sofa beside him, and walked across the room to where she stood.
“Miss Vincent, I believe?” he said.
Eleanor blushed at the sound of that false name, and then bent her head in reply to the question. She could not say yes. She could not fall into this disagreeable falsehood all at once.
“I am Mrs. Darrell’s friend and legal adviser, Mr. Monckton,” the gentleman said, “and I shall be very happy to perform the duty she has entrusted to me. We are in very good time, Miss Vincent. I know that young ladies are generally ultra-punctual upon these occasions; and I came very early in order to anticipate you, if possible.”
Eleanor did not speak. She was looking furtively at the face of Mrs. Darrell’s friend and legal adviser. A good and wise adviser, Miss Vane thought: for the face, not strictly handsome, seemed to bear in its every feature the stamp of three qualities—goodness, wisdom, and strength.
“I am sure he is very good,” she thought; “but I would not like to offend him for the world, for though he looks so kind now, I know he must be terrible when he’s angry.”
She looked almost fearfully at the strongly-marked black eyebrows, thinking what a stormy darkness must overshadow the massive face when they contracted over the grave, brown eyes—serious and earnest eyes, but with a latent fire lurking somewhere in their calm depths, Eleanor thought.
The girl’s mind rambled on thus while she stood by the stranger’s side in the sunlit window. Already the blackness of her new life was broken by this prominent figure standing boldly out upon its very threshold. Already she was learning to be interested in new people.
“He isn’t a bit like a lawyer,” she thought; “I fancied lawyers were always shabby old men, with blue bags. The men who used to come to Chelsea after papa were always nasty disagreeable men, with papers about the Queen and Richard Roe.”
Mr. Monckton looked thoughtfully down at the girl by his side. There was a vein of silent poetry, and there were dim glimpses of artistic feeling hidden somewhere in the nature of this man, very far below the hard, business-like exterior which he presented to the world. He felt a quiet pleasure in looking at Eleanor’s young beauty. It was her youthfulness, perhaps, her almost childlike innocence, which made her greatest charm. Her face was not that of a common beauty: her aquiline nose, grey eyes, and firmly-moulded mouth had a certain air of queenliness very rarely to be seen; but the youth of the soul shining out of the clear eyes was visible in every glance, in every change of expression.