She saw this strange face between other faces—as it were in a cleft in the block of people. She saw it at the end of a vista, with the sunlight from the chancel window full upon it—a face that impressed her as no face of a stranger had ever done before.
It looked like the face of Judas, she thought; and then in the next moment was ashamed of her fancy.
“It is only the colouring, and the effect of the light upon it,” she told herself. “I am not so weak as to cherish the vulgar prejudice against that coloured hair.”
“That coloured hair” was of the colour which a man’s enemies call red and his friends auburn or chestnut. It was of that ruddy brown which Titian has immortalised in more than one Venus, and without which Potiphar’s wife would be a nonentity.
The stranger wore a small pointed beard of this famous colouring. His eyes were of a reddish brown, large, and luminous, his eyebrows strongly arched; his nose was a small aquiline; his brow was wide and lofty, slightly bald in front. His mouth was the only obviously objectionable feature. The lips were finely moulded, from a Greek sculptor’s standpoint, and would have done for a Greek Bacchus, but the expression was at once crafty and sensual. The auburn moustache served to accentuate rather than to conceal that repellant expression. Mildred looked at him presently as he stood up for the Te Deum.
He was tall, for she saw his head well above intervening heads. He looked about five-and-thirty. He had the air of being a gentleman.
“Whoever he is, I hope I shall never see him again,” thought Mildred.
CHAPTER X.
THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON.
When Mr. and Mrs. Greswold left the church, the stranger was taking his place in the Hillersdon wagonette, a capacious vehicle, drawn by a pair of upstanding black-brown horses, set off by servants in smart liveries of dark brown and gold.
Mildred gave a sigh of relief. If the stranger was a visitor at Riverdale it was not likely that he would stay long in the neighbourhood, or be seen again for years to come. The guests at Riverdale were generally birds of passage; and the same faces seldom appeared there twice. Mr. and Mrs. Hillersdon of Riverdale were famous for their extensive circle, and famous for bringing new people into the county. Some of their neighbours said it was Mr. Hillersdon who brought the people there, and that Mrs. Hillersdon had nothing to do with the visiting list; others declared that husband and wife were equally fickle and equally frivolous.