"You are a visitor at Chandos, I presume?"
"For a little time, sir."
"So I judged, when I saw you with Harry Chandos. That you were not Miss Chandos, who married the Frenchman, I knew, for you bear no resemblance to her: and she is the only daughter of the family. I fancied they did not welcome strangers at Chandos."
I made no answer; though he looked at me with his jet-black eyes as if waiting for it; the same stern, penetrating eyes as of old. How I wished to get away! but it was impossible to pass by him without rudeness, and he stood blocking up the confined path.
"Are you a confidential friend of the family?" he resumed.
"No, sir; I am not to be called a friend at all; quite otherwise. Until a few days ago, I was a stranger to them. Accident brought me then to Chandos, but my stay here will be temporary."
"I should be glad to make your acquaintance by name," he went on, never taking those terrible eyes off me. Not that the eyes in themselves were so very terrible; but the fear of my childhood had returned to me in all its force—a very bugbear. I had made the first acquaintance of Mr. Edwin Barley in a moment of fear—that is, he frightened me. Unintentionally on his own part, it is true, but with not less of effect upon me. The circumstances of horror (surely it is not too strong a word) that had followed, in all of which he was mixed up, had only tended to increase the feeling; and woman-grown though I was now, the meeting with him had brought it all back to me.
"Will you not favour me with your name?"
He spoke politely, quite as a gentleman, but I felt my face grow red, white, hot, and cold. I had answered his questions, feeling that I dared not resist; that I feared to show him aught but civility; but—to give him my name; to rush, as it were, into the lion's jaws! No, I would not do that; and I plucked up what courage was left me.
"My name is of no consequence, sir. I am but a very humble individual, little more than a schoolgirl. I was brought here by a lady, who, immediately upon her arrival, was recalled home by illness in her family, and I am in daily expectation of a summons from her; after which I daresay I shall never see Chandos or any of its inmates again. Will you be kind enough to allow me to pass?"