The Yellow House; Master of Men. E. Phillips Oppenheim
you know mine?”
“No.”
“Let me introduce myself, then. I am Miss Ffolliot—the pale-faced chit, you know!” I added, maliciously. “My father is the new vicar.”
I was standing up before him with my hands clasped behind my back, and almost felt the flash of his dark, fiery eyes as they swept over me. I could not look away from him.
There was a distinct change in his whole appearance. At last he was looking at me with genuine interest. The lines of his mouth had come together sharply, and his face was as black as thunder.
“Ffolliot?” he repeated, slowly—“Ffolliot? How do you spell it?”
“Anyhow, so long as you remember the two F’s!” I answered, suavely. “Generally, double F, O, double L, I, O, T. Rather a pretty name, we think, although I am afraid that you don’t seem to like it. Oh! here’s my father coming. Won’t you stay, and make his acquaintance?”
My father, returning from the church, with his surplice under his arm, had been attracted by the sight of a strange man talking to me on the lawn, and was coming slowly over towards us. Mr. Deville turned round rather abruptly. The two men met face to face, my father dignified, correct, severe, Bruce Deville untidy, ill-clad, with sullen, darkened face, lit by the fire which flashed from his eyes. Yet there was a certain dignity about his bearing, and he met my father’s eyes resolutely. The onus of speech seemed to rest with him, and he accepted it.
“I need no introduction to Mr. Ffolliot,” he said, sternly. “I am afraid that I can offer you no welcome to Northshire. This is a surprise.”
My father looked him up and down with stony severity.
“So far as I am concerned, sir,” he said, “I desire no welcome from you. Had I known that you were to be amongst my near neighbors, I should not have taken up my abode here for however short a time.”
“The sentiment,” remarked Mr. Deville, “is altogether mutual. At any rate, we can see as little of each other as possible. I wish you a good morning.”
He raised his cap presumably to me, although he did not glance in my direction, and went off across the lawn, taking huge strides, and crossing our flower beds with reckless unconcern. My father watched him go with a dark shadow resting upon his face. He laid his fingers upon my arm, and their touch through my thin gown was like the touch of fire. I looked into his still, calm face, and I wondered. It was marvellous that a man should wear such a mask.
“You have known him?” I murmured. “Where? Who is he?”
My father drew a long, inward breath through his clenched teeth.
“That man,” he said, slowly, with his eyes still fixed upon the now distant figure, “was closely, very closely, associated with the most unhappy chapter of my life. It was all over and done with before you were old enough to understand. It is many, many years ago, but I felt in his presence as though it were but yesterday. It is many years ago—but it hurts still—like a knife it hurts.”
He held his hand pressed convulsively to his side, and stood watching the grey, stalwart figure now almost out of sight. His face was white and strained—some symptoms of yesterday’s faintness seemed to be suggested by those wan cheeks and over bright eyes. Even I, naturally unsympathetic and callous, was moved. I laid my hand upon his shoulders.
“It is over and finished, you say, this dark chapter,” I whispered, softly. “I would not think of it.”
He looked at me for a moment in silence. The grey pallor still lingered in his thin, sunken cheeks, and his eyes were like cold fires. It was a face which might well guard its own secrets. I looked into it, and felt a vague sense of trouble stirring within me. Was that chapter of his life turned over and done with forever? Was that secret at which he had hinted, and the knowledge of which lay between these two, wholly of the past, or was it a live thing? I could not tell. My father was fast becoming the enigma of my life.
“I cannot cease to think about it,” he said, slowly. “I shall never cease to think about it until—until——”
“Until when?” I whispered.
“Until the end,” he cried, hoarsely—“until the end, and God grant that it may not be long.”
CHAPTER IV
OUR MYSTERIOUS NEIGHBORS
This was a faithful and exact account of my meeting with the first of those two of our neighbors who seemed, according to Lady Naselton’s report, to remain entirely outside the ordinary society of the place. Curiously enough, my meeting with the second one occurred on the very next afternoon.
We came face to face at a turning in the wood within a few yards of her odd little house, and the surprise of it almost took my breath away. Could this be the woman condemned to isolation by a whole neighborhood—the woman on whose shoulders lay the burden of Bruce Deville’s profligacy? I looked into the clear, dark eyes which met mine without any shadow of embarrassment—returning in some measure the keen interest of my own scrutiny—and the thing seemed impossible.
She spoke to me graciously, and as though to do so were quite a matter of course. Her voice completed my subjugation. One may so often be deceived by faces, but the voice seems an infallible test.
“There is going to be a terrible storm,” she said. “Won’t you come in for a few minutes? You will scarcely be able to get home, and these trees are not safe.”
Even while she was speaking the big rain drops began to fall. I gathered up my skirts, and hurried along by her side.
“It is very good of you,” I said, breathlessly. “I am dreadfully afraid of a thunderstorm.”
We crossed the trim little lawn, and in a moment I had passed the portals of the Yellow House. The front door opened into a low, square hall, hung with old-fashioned engravings against a background of dark oak. There were rugs upon the polished floor, and several easy chairs and lounges. By the side of one was a box from Mudie’s, evidently just arrived, and a small wood fire was burning in the open grate. She laid her hand on the back of a low rocking chair.
“Shall we sit here?” she suggested. “We can keep the door open and watch the storm. Or perhaps you would rather see as little of it as possible?”
I took the easy chair opposite to her.
“I don’t mind watching it from inside,” I answered. “I am not really nervous, but those trees look horribly unsafe. One wants to be on the moor to enjoy a thunderstorm.”
She looked at me with a faint smile, kindly but critically.
“No, you don’t look particularly nervous,” she said. “I wonder——”
A crash of thunder drowned the rest of her sentence.
In the silence which followed I found her studying my features intently. For some reason or other she seemed suddenly to have developed a new and strong interest in me. Her eyes were fastened upon my face. I began to feel almost uncomfortable.
She suddenly realized it, and broke into a little laugh.
“Forgive my staring at you so outrageously,” she exclaimed. “You must think me a very rude person. It is odd to meet any one in the woods about here, you know; and I don’t think that I have ever seen you before, have I?”
I shook my head.
“Probably not; unless you were at church yesterday,” I said.
“Then I certainly have not, for I do not attend church,” she answered. “But you don’t live in church, do you?”
I laughed.
“Oh,