Mr. Ollivera was turning to the house. Roland opened the parlour door when he had passed it; to look after him.
Some one else was there. Peering out from a dark nook in the passage, her lips slightly apart, her eyes strained after the clergyman with a strange kind of fear in their depths, stood Alletha Rye. Mr. Ollivera suddenly turned back, as though he had forgotten something, and she shrank out of sight. Mrs. Jones introduced Roland: "Mr. Roland Yorke."
Mr. Ollivera's face was thin; his dark brown eyes shone with a flashing, restless, feverish light. Be you very sure when that peculiar light is seen, it betokens a mind ill at rest. The eyes fixed themselves on Roland: and perhaps there was something in the tall, fine form, in the good-nature of the strong-featured countenance, that recalled a memory to Mr. Ollivera.
"Any relative of the Yorkes of Helstonleigh?"
"I should think so," said Roland, "I am a Yorke of Helstonleigh. But I've not been there since I went to Port Natal, seven years and more ago. Do you know them, Mr. Ollivera?"
"I know a little of the minor-canon, William Yorke, and----"
"Oh! he!" curtly interrupted Roland, with a vast amount of scorn. "He is a beauty to know, he is."
The remark, so like a flash of boyish resentment, excited a slight smile in Mr. Ollivera.
"Bill Yorke showed himself a cur once in his life, and it's not me that's going to forget it. He'd have cared for my telling him of it, too, had I come back worth a few millions from Port Natal, and gone about Helstonleigh in my carriage and four."
Mr. Ollivera said some courteous words about hoping to make Roland's better acquaintance, and departed. Roland suddenly remembered the claims of his office, and tore away at full speed.