Jean was in the garden, intent on hastening the completion of certain changes that had been commenced in the arrangement of flower beds and shrubbery, indeed putting her own hands to the work of clipping and transplanting under proper direction and authority. She saw the stranger the moment he opened the gate, and stood still in her place behind a sheltering fir-tree, regarding him as he came slowly round the drive.
She saw a pleasant face, with something of the pallor of the student upon it—not handsome, but a good, true face, she thought as he came nearer. He was tall, as her father had said, and he stooped a little; but it was not a round-shouldered stoop, rather a slight inclining forward as he walked, such as short-sighted people are apt to fall into unawares. Certainly he was “not to call old.”
A scholar and a gentleman, her father had said. He was all that, or his looks belied him, Jean told herself as he came slowly forward.
He stood for a moment looking up into the sky through the lovely mingling of faint colours made by the swelling buds and opening leaves in the tops of the great beeches, and Jean’s impulse was to come forward at once and give him welcome. But she looked at her gloves, and at her thick shoes soiled with the garden mould, and at her linsey gown too short to hide them, and she thought of her sister, and “these fastidious English folk,” and the “credit of the family,” and so went swiftly round the house, and in at the back door, and up to her own room.
She did not linger over her toilette, however. By the time Phemie came to announce the stranger’s arrival, the stately young mistress of the house was ready in her pretty house dress of some dim purple stuff to go down and receive him. She went with more shyness than stateliness, however, being conscious of the object of his coming, and entered so quietly, that he did not move from the window out of which he was gazing, till she had come near him. He turned quickly at the sound of her voice.
“Is it—Mr Manners?” said she, offering her hand. “You expected me then?”
“Yes. Papa told me you were coming.”
“And you are Jean? And you will be my friend?” Jean’s eyes met his frankly and very gravely for a moment, and then she said softly,—
“Yes. I think I may promise to be your friend.”
If she could put any trust in the face as an index of character, she might surely promise that, she thought. She waited a moment, expecting that he would ask for her sister. He did not, but stood looking at her in a silence that must have become embarrassing if it had continued long. So she offered breakfast, which he declined. Then she expressed her regret that he should have missed her father, but she would send at once to tell him of his arrival.