She put on her prettiest gown in honour of the visitor. It was by no means an elaborate costume. There were no intricacies of style, no artistic combinations of material. Celia’s best indoor gown was only a dark-green French merino, brightened by a good deal of ribbon, artfully disposed in unexpected bows and knots, and floating sash-ends. Happily, the colour suited Celia’s complexion, and the soft fabric fell in graceful folds upon her slender figure. Altogether Celia felt herself looking nice when she put out her candles and ran downstairs.
A substantial tea-dinner was waiting for the travellers in the dining-room, to the sore discomfort of the Vicar, who hated a tea-dinner, and was accustomed to dine at a punctual half-past six.
‘Why must we have a makeshift meal of this kind?’ he asked fretfully. ‘Why couldn’t these young men be here in time for our regular dinner?’
‘Why, because there was no train to bring them, you dear, stupid old pater,’ retorted the flippant Celia. ‘I’m sure the table looks quite too lovely.’
A fine piece of cold roast beef at the end opposite the urn and tea-tray, a pigeon pie, a salad, an apple pasty, a home-made cake or two, diamond-cut jars of marmalade and jam, and a noble glass bowl of junket, did not promise badly for two hungry young men; but the Vicar looked across the board, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, and found it all barren.
‘I suppose nobody has thought of ordering anything hot for me?’ he remarked with an injured air.
It was a tradition in the family that the Vicar could not eat a cold dinner. It was not that he would not, but that he could not. The consequences were too awful. No one but himself knew the agonies which he suffered if he was forced to dine on cold beef or mutton. His system could accommodate lobster, he could even reconcile nature to cold chicken, but his internal economy would have nothing to do with cold mutton or beef.
‘Dearest creature,’ said Celia, raising herself on tiptoe in order to caress her father’s iron-gray beard, ‘there is a particular dish of cutlets for you, with the mushroom sauce your soul loveth.’
The Vicar gave a sigh of satisfaction, and just at that moment the wheels of the omnibus sounded on the road outside, the Vicarage gate fell back with a clang, and Mr. Clare and his daughter went out to receive the travellers, while Mrs. Clare, who had been indulging herself with a nap by the drawing-room fire, opened her eyes, and began to wonder vaguely whether it was night or morning.
What sort of man did Celia behold when she went into the lamp-lit hall, sheltering herself shyly under her father’s wing, to welcome her brother and his guest? Not at all the kind of young man she expected to see, yet his appearance impressed her favourably, notwithstanding. He was strikingly original, she told Laura afterwards, and that in an age of humdrum was much. She saw a tall, broad-shouldered man, with marked features, well shaped yet somewhat rugged, a pale complexion slightly pitted with small-pox, black hair and beard, dark gray eyes, with a wonderful power and light in them, under thick black brows.