It was hardly dusk then.
Aunt Patty, as usual after school on Friday, had swept the room and put down the dark and dingy paper curtains.
I opened the door and stood an instant looking into the gloom before entering. Then I saw that there was some one sitting in my chair—a man with his head bent forward and buried in his arms, which were folded on the desk.
It was Mr. Rollin, and before I had time to retreat, he lifted his head and saw me standing at the door.
I had expected that the first revelation of that glance would contain something of grief, wretchedness, remorse. The fisherman's countenance wore a shadow of annoyance, but it was expressive, above all, of a childish petulance and irritation.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, speaking with the utmost abruptness, and rising from the chair; "if you had only left this place at the end of the first term, it would have saved the whole of this abominable misadventure!"
"I don't think I understand you," I said, freezing now in sober earnest.
"Because in your eyes only, it is a misadventure," he continued rapidly, with growing excitement. "You came to this miserable hole—this Wallencamp—resolved to view everything in a new light—the light of unselfish devotion to great ends, and exalted aspiration, and ideal perfection, and all that. Well, how has the wretched, giggling, conniving little community shown out in that light? I suppose there's one—that larking Cradlebow—who has stood the test and come out creditably, by reason of an uncommonly artistic shock of hair and a Raphaelite countenance. As for me, taken in the ordinary sense, I'm no worse than a thousand others, but I say that it was a decidedly unfortunate light to put me in! It was a decidedly unfair light!"
"I have no wish to judge you in any light," I said, and explaining briefly my errand to the school-house, I expressed regret at having interrupted the fisherman's meditations, and turned to go.
"Miss Hungerford!" he exclaimed, with a gesture of whimsical force and impatience; "it's my last chance for an explanation. Don't, for God's sake, cut it short at this point. You might know—you might know, that I'm not a bad fellow at heart. But you will never see the best side of me—there's fate in it. I never wanted to seem specially contrite but I must set myself jumping like a jack-in-the box for your infernally cold amusement! I had an explanation at my tongue's end. D—n it! I don't remember a word of it."