He glanced at the dim and worn painting of Penelope and the suitors over the fireplace. Here, indeed, was a Penelope, and Lyddon considered she had narrowly missed having an unconscious suitor in the person of Philip Isabey. Luckily he had gone away before the impression made upon him by Angela had deepened and changed the current of his being.
Lyddon looked critically at Angela. She was certainly growing very pretty, with a kind of beauty captivating as it was irregular. She would never be classed as a beauty, but was as charming as Adrienne Le Noir was seductive.
While these thoughts flashed through Lyddon’s mind he glanced toward the western window and saw in the gloom of the wintry evening the Harrowby carriage coming down the cedar lane.
“There’s Colonel Tremaine,” he said.
Angela’s thoughts were suddenly diverted into practical channels. “I must have Uncle Tremaine’s fire lighted at once!” she cried, and, stepping out upon the back porch, she rang the bell five times, which was supposed to summon Tasso, but, after ringing in turn for Mirandy and Jim Henry, finally succeeded in getting both of them, who proceeded to hunt the place for Tasso instead of lighting the fire themselves.
Meanwhile the carriage was at the door, and Angela, snatching up her crimson mantle and throwing it over her fair head, ran down the steps and herself opened the carriage door.
Out stepped Colonel Tremaine and kissed her affectionately. But there was another person within the carriage—a man, pale and worn and haggard, with a leg and an arm bound up. It was Philip Isabey.
The shock of seeing him was shown in Angela’s expressive face. Instead of the warm and ready greeting which a guest usually receives, she stood at the carriage door, her mantle dropping off her shoulders, looking at Isabey with eyes which had in them something both of fear and of delight. She felt more emotion at this sudden apparition of him than she had ever felt at seeing anyone in her life before. And with it an instinctive dread of being thrown with him again instantly sprang into life.
Isabey, himself, had the disadvantage of being a close observer. He had looked forward to this meeting not with fear but with pure delight, and was prepared to watch how Angela greeted him; she was so guileless that she was easily read by an experienced eye.
He held out his hand feebly and said in his old, pleasant, musical voice: “How glad I am to see you again!”