“Miss Challoner!” The voice sounded so near her that Phillis gave a great start. She had nearly reached the gate, and there was Mr. Dancy walking beside her, just as though he had emerged from the ground; and yet Phillis had not heard a sound. “Have I startled you?” he continued, gravely. “You were in such a brown study that I had to call you by your name to rouse you. There is nothing wrong at the White House, I hope?”
“Oh, no! Mrs. Cheyne is better: her nervous attack has quite passed off.”
“Magdalene suffering from a nervous attack?” and then Mr. Dancy stopped, and bit his lip. “Excuse me, I knew her before she was married, when she was Magdalene Davenport—before she and poor Herbert Cheyne unfortunately came together. I doubt whether things have not happened for the best; there!—I mean,” as Phillis looked at him in some perplexity, “that there is little fear of her being an inconsolable widow.”
“How can you say such a thing!” returned Phillis, indignantly. “That is the way with you men, you judge so harshly of women. Mrs. Cheyne is singular in her ways. She wears no mourning, and yet a more unhappy creature never existed on this earth. Not inconsolable!—and yet no one dares to speak a word of comfort to her, so great is her misery.”
“Excuse me one moment: I have been ill, and am still subject to fits of giddiness. A mere vertigo; nothing more.” But he said the words gasping for breath, and looked so deadly pale that Phillis felt quite frightened as she stood beside him.
They had been walking a few steps down the Braidwood Road, and Phillis had looked out anxiously for Nan, who had not yet appeared in sight. But now Mr. Dancy had come to an abrupt pause, and was leaning for support against the low wall that shut in the grounds of the White House. Phillis looked at him a little curiously, in spite of her sympathy. He still wore his loose cloak, though the evening was warm; but he had loosened it, and taken off his felt hat for air.
In figure he was a tall, powerful-looking man, only thin and almost emaciated, as though from recent illness. His features were handsome, but singularly bronzed and weather-beaten, as 218 though from constant exposure to sun and wind; and even the blue spectacles could not hide a pair of keen blue eyes. By daylight Phillis could see that his brown beard and moustache were tinged with gray, and the hair on the temples was almost white; and yet he seemed still in the prime of life. It was a far handsomer face than Archie Drummond’s; but the deep lines and gray hair spoke of trouble more than age, and one thing especially impressed Phillis,—the face was as refined as the voice.
If Mr. Dancy were aware of her close scrutiny, he took no notice of it. He leaned his arm against the wall and rested his head against it; and the thin brown hand was plainly visible, with a deep-red scar just above the wrist.
As Phillis had regarded it with sudden horror, wondering what had inflicted it, he suddenly aroused himself with an apology:
“There! it has passed: it never lasts long. Shall we walk on? I am so ashamed of detaining you in this way; but when a man has had a sunstroke––”