“Only one newcomer,” said Eunice, making place for him on a rusty sofa.
“And he a foreigner, ailing and married,” added Louisa, disdainfully. “Who but Eunice would have looked twice at that old fossil with one foot in the grave?”
“He interested me, I don’t know why,” confessed Miss Hall. “I met him first walking in Chinquepin Hollow, his head sunk on his breast, talking to himself. I thought I never saw such a wreck of a handsome man. And his eyes, when he fixed them on me in passing, burned like live coals.”
Old Dick started irrepressibly.
“He—you met—oh, impossible! Gad, I believe I’m possessed by one idea. A foreigner, you say—traveling with his wife?”
“Yes; they stopped here but a day, to take the evening train. As it happened, they had the room next to mine, on the upper gallery; and as our windows, opening at the floor, almost touched, I heard them speaking to each other in French in a very excited, agitated way. Fearing I might overhear what was not intended for my ear, I got up and stepped out upon the gallery. Immediately there was silence, and a long, emaciated hand, like yellow wax, drew in their shutters close together.”
A burst of laughter followed this narration.
“Trust Eunice for hatching mystery,” said Louisa, laughing. “I saw the couple getting into the stage to go to the station: he, a prosaic invalid, his head wrapped in a silk muffler; she, a dumpy little French woman, perfectly commonplace. Come, General Ross, have you not brought back to us from your travels a new story?”
“Something that happened before the war, in a nice, gone-to-seed family,” added Louisa’s younger sister, Blanche. “And pray let the house have wainscoting and a secret chamber.”
“No, no; something real. A war story,” said young Harry Lemist, who had a thirst for active movement and little imagination.