Jervais flushed and turned back for a moment.
"Yes, Mistress Brandon is returning from Cooper's Well to-day."
Everett started and half rose from his chair.
"Mistress James Brandon?" he asked quickly.
"Yes," Jervais answered, looking at him with the hauteur that was his marked characteristic. "Do you know her?"
"No—at least I mean only through letters. I have come down here to be a tutor for her children."
Before he had finished speaking the coach was at the block, and Jervais had rushed forward, to see that the ladder was placed firmly in the door.
The first passenger to appear was a tall woman, enveloped in a voluminous linen duster, her features almost obscured beneath a green barège veil. Jervais assisted her to alight with elaborate courtesy, and then turned to lift out two boys and a little girl.
The girl, when she stepped down to the pavement, evidently disdaining the proffered help of Jervais, looked about her in apparent search for some friend. As her glance travelled from one face to another, it rested for a moment on Everett, half questioning, then quickly shifted to the others. In the second that their eyes met Everett got a vivid impression of her oddly beautiful face—thin, and very dark, with intense grey eyes that contrasted almost weirdly with her black hair. In the deep shadow of a projecting poke bonnet her eyes seemed almost too large for the delicate contour of her face, and as she turned away, he noticed that she wore her hair in two long plaits.
Suddenly she uttered a quick cry of pleasure as she saw an old man coming towards her out of the crowd, and after rushing forward to kiss him they both turned towards a carriage which had just stopped near the pavement.