"Oh, ah! Yes, of course. You came down by this train. Just get on the box, will you, and we will take you straight to the scene of the tragedy, as I suppose all the newspapers will have it to-morrow," and Claud motioned Joseph to his seat with a hurried injunction "to look sharp." When he turned again to Miss Allonby, she was quite quiet and composed. Nobody could have guessed that she had received any news that might shock her. "Wasting my pity, after all, it seems," thought Claud, as he helped her into the carriage. "I hope you will excuse my driving up with you," he said, as he took his place beside her. "It's a good long walk, and I'm anxious to be back as fast as possible."
"I can only thank you most sincerely for taking so much trouble on our account," she answered, at once, "and I should be so grateful if you would tell me something of what has happened. I am quite in the dark, and—the suspense is oppressive."
"I shall be only too glad to help you in any way," he said, with one of his deft little bows, which always conveyed an impression of finished courtesy. "You are Miss Allonby, I presume?"
"Yes—and you?"
"My name's Cranmer, and I am a total stranger to your brother, whom I have never seen but in a state of perfect unconsciousness."
He proceeded to relate to her all the incidents of the eventful yesterday.
She listened with an interest which was visible but controlled, and with perfect self-possession. Her eyes rested on his face all the while he was speaking—not with any disagreeable persistency, but with a simple frank desire to comprehend everything—not the mere words alone, but any such shade of meaning as looks and expression can give.
With his habit of close observation, Claud studied her as he spoke, and by the end of his narration had catalogued her features and attributes with the accuracy which was an essential part of him. There are men to whom girls are in some sense a mystery, who take in dreamy and comprehensive ideas of them, surrounded by a little idealization or fancy of their own, these could never tell you what a woman wore, how her dress was cut, not even the arrangement of her front hair—that all important detail!—nor the color of her eyes or size of her hands. It is to be conjectured that a certain loss of illusion might result to these men when, on being married, they find themselves unavoidably in close proximity to one of these heretofore mistily contemplated divinities, and by slow degrees make the inevitable discovery that their "phantom of delight" eats, drinks, sleeps, brushes her hair, and dresses and undresses in as mundane a fashion as their own.
Claud Cranmer, though doubtless he lost much delight by never surrounding womanhood with a halo of unreality, yet would certainly be spared any such lowering of a preconceived ideal, since he took stock in a detailed and matter-of-fact way of every woman he met, and by the time Miss Allonby and he reached Poole Farm could have handed in a report as cool and unpoetically worded as Olivia's description of herself—"Item two lips, indifferent red—item two grey eyes with lids to them."
But his companion's eyes were not grey, they were hazel and were the only feature of her face meriting to be called handsome. As before stated, she was pale, and had the air of being overworked—though this might be partially the result of a long and hurried journey. Her skin was fair and pure, with an appearance of delicacy, by which term is here meant refinement, not ill health. Her impassive critic observed that her ears were small and well-set, that the shape of her head was good, her teeth white and even, and her eyelashes long, she had no claims at all to be considered beautiful, or even what is called a pretty girl—which being stated, the reader will doubtless rush at once to the conclusion that she was plain, which was far from the case. It was just such a face as scarcely two people would be agreed upon. One might find it interesting, another complain that it was hatchetty, the former would admire the clean-cut way of the features, the latter gloomily prophecy nut-crackers for old age, and lament over angular shoulders and sharp elbows.