Mrs. Gilbert sat in the dusk for a little while after her husband had left her, thinking of that last look which Roland Lansdell had given her in the church.
Heaven knows how long she might have sat thinking of him, if Mrs. Jeffson had not come in with those two miserable mould-candles, which were wont to make feeble patches of yellow haze, not light, in the doctor's parlour. After the candles had been brought Isabel took a book from the top of the little chiffonier by the fireplace. It was a religious book. Was she not trying to be good now, and was not goodness incompatible with the perusal of Shelley's poetry on a Sunday? It was a very dry religious book, being in fact a volume of Tillotson's sermons, with more hard logic, and firstly, secondly, and thirdly, than ordinary human nature could support. Isabel sat with the volume open before her, staring hopelessly at the pale, old-fashioned type, and going back a little way every now and then when she caught her thoughts far away from the Reverend Tillotson. She sat thus till after the clock had struck ten. She was all alone in the lower part of the house at that hour, for the Jeffsons had gone clumping up-stairs to bed at half-past eight. She sat alone, a poor childish, untaught, unguided creature, staring at Tillotson, and thinking of Roland Lansdell; yet trying to be good all the time in her own feeble way. She sat thus, until she was startled by a cautious single knock at the door. She started from her seat at the sound; but she went boldly enough, with the candle in her hand, to answer the summons.
There was nothing uncommon in a late knocking at the doctor's door,—some one from the lanes wanted medicine, no doubt; the people in the lanes were always wanting medicine. Mrs. Gilbert opened the door, and looked out into the darkness. A man was standing there, a well-clad, rather handsome-looking man, with broad shoulders, bold black eyes, and a black beard that covered all the lower part of his face. He did not wait to be invited to enter, but walked across the threshold like a man who had a right to come into that house, and almost pushed Isabel on one side as he did so. At first she only stared at him with a blank look of wonder, but all at once her face grew as white as the plaster on the wall behind her.
"You!" she gasped, in a whisper; "you here!"
"Yes, me! You needn't stare as if you saw a ghost. There's nothing so very queer about me, is there? You're a nice young lady, I don't think, to stand there shivering and staring. Where's your husband?"
"Up-stairs. Oh, why, why did you come here?" cried the Doctor's Wife, piteously, clasping her hands like a creature in some extremity of fear and trouble; "how could you be so cruel as to come here; how could you be so cruel as to come?"
"How could I be so—fiddlesticks!" muttered the stranger, with supreme contempt. "I came here because I had nowhere else to go, my lassie. You needn't whimper; for I shan't trouble you very long—this is not exactly the sort of place I should care to hang-out in: if you can give me a bed in this house for to-night, well and good; if not, you can give me a sovereign, and I'll find one elsewhere. While I am here, remember my name's Captain Morgan, and I'm in the merchant service,—just home from the Mauritius."