The pet name for her in his babyhood, and which he had long since discarded, dropped from his lips naturally now, and putting down her candle the old lady took him in her arms and nearly strangled him as she sobbed:
“Forgive you, Phil? Of course I will, with all my heart, and kiss you, too. Any woman, young or old, would like to kiss a mouth like yours.”
We do not believe our readers will like Philip Rossiter the less for this little incident, or because even in his young manhood he had a mouth which any woman, young or old, might like to kiss. A handsome mouth it was, with full red lips which always seemed just ready to break into a merry, saucy laugh, but which you felt intuitively had never been polluted by an oath, or vulgar word, or low insinuation against any one. In thought, and word, and deed, he was as pure as any girl, and held all women in the utmost respect, because his mother was a woman.
At the time our story opens Phil was twenty-five years old, though from the delicacy of his complexion he looked younger, and might easily have passed for twenty-one. Tall, willowy, and graceful in figure, he was, like all the Ferguson race, blue-eyed and fair, with a profusion of soft brown hair, which curled just enough to save it from stiffness. People called him handsome, with his frank, open, boyish face and winning smile but he hated himself for it, as a handsome man was an abomination, he thought, and he had times of hating himself generally, because of that natural distaste to application of any kind, which kept him from being what he felt sure he was capable of being if he could but rouse himself to action. Had he been a woman, he would have made a capital dressmaker, for he knew all the details of a lady’s dress, from the arrangement of her hair to the fit of her boot, and could detect at a glance any incongruity in color, and style, and make-up. To his sisters he was invaluable as a critic, and no article which he condemned was ever worn again. It was strange, considering how unlike to each other they were, that Phil and Mr. Beresford should be such friends, but each understood perfectly the peculiarities of the other, and each sought the other’s society continually. With Mr. Beresford the fact that Phil was a Rossiter covered a multitude of sins, while more democratic Phil cared but little who Mr. Beresford’s family were, but liked the lawyer for himself, and spent a great deal of time in his office, where he once actually begun the study of law, but gave it up as soon as a party of his college friends asked him to join an excursion to the Adirondacks, and he never resumed it again.
CHAPTER IV.
THE INVESTIGATION.
“Well, this is a jolly place for the kind of girl I fancy Miss Reinette to be,” Phil said, as he strolled through the grounds, putting aside with his cane the weeds, and shrubs, and creeping vines, which choked not only the flower-beds, but even the walks themselves.
Everywhere were marks of ruin and decay, and the house seemed worse than all the rest, it was so damp and gloomy, with doors off their hinges, floors half rotted away, and the glass gone from most of the lower windows.
“Seems like some old haunted castle, and I actually feel my flesh creep, don’t you?” Phil said to his companion, as they went through room after room below, and then ascended the broad staircase to the floor above.
“Suppose we first take the room intended for Miss Reinette?” Mr. Beresford suggested, and they bent their steps at once toward the large chamber with the bay-window overlooking the town and the country for miles and miles away.