As he left the room to search for his father, who had gone out, Robert Hunter entered it. Seeing a stranger there, an apparent invalid, he was quitting it again hastily when Mary Anne arrested him.
"You need not go, Robert; it is my stepmother, Lady Ellis. Mr. Hunter."
At the first moment not a trace could he find of the handsome, haughty-faced woman who had beguiled him with her charms in the days gone by. Not a charm was left. She had left off using adjuncts, and her face was almost yellow; its roundness of contour had gone; the cheeks were hollow and wrinkled, the jaws angular. Only by the eyes, as they flashed for a moment into his with a sort of dismayed light, did he recognise her. Bowing coldly, he would have retreated, but she, recovering herself instantly, held out her hand.
"No wonder you have forgotten me; I am greatly changed."
Mary Anne Thornycroft looked on with astonishment. Had they ever met before?
"Yes," said Lady Ellis; "but he was mostly called Mr. Lake then."
A flush dyed Robert Hunter's brow. "I threw off the name years ago, when I threw off other things," he said.
"What other things did you throw off?" quickly asked Mary Anne.
"Oh, many," was the careless answer; "frivolity and idleness, amidst them."
Perhaps he remembered that his manner and words, in the view of that wasted face and form, were needlessly ungracious, for his tone changed; he sat down, and said he was sorry to see her looking ill.