Kingston Darnley, as usual, was late for breakfast. He had loitered
pleasantly over his toilet, relieving the repellent prose of the
process by frequent intervals of poetic rest at the open window. The
little old diamond-paned casement of his dressing-room was open, and
the crooked oak-panelled apartment was flooded with morning sunlight.
Very far below, against the feet of the cliff beneath, the blue and
gold of the clear water came lapping in friendship, and its lazy
utterance rose faint and thin to the listener through the virginal
clarity of the air. The day was not yet old enough for the haze and
stress of heat: all was still clean and fresh from the cool sweetness
of the night and the unclouded dawn. To the uttermost horizon spread
the level floor of the sea, a glory of scent and colour, gleaming,
vital, incredibly buoyant and young for all its uncounted æons of life.
Again and again Kingston stayed to dally with the enormous loveliness
of life, leaning from the window whence he might have dropped a pebble
straight into the purple ripples a hundred feet and more below, where
they played leisurely at hide-and-seek among the rocks under the cliff.
It was indeed a morning to be up and alive--a morning to be naked in
the naked embrace of the world. As the hours go by, the world, no
less than man, puts on its clothes. Clouds and shadows and haze come
up to cover the strong free limbs of the earth. It is only in the
short space after sunrise in some still morning that the world stands
out pure and glorious in its nudity--vivid, stainless, triumphant as
the white flawlessness of the young Apollo newly risen out of the
dark, formless void. The upspringing day is our emblem of youth fresh
from slumber--beautiful, ardent, splendid in the clear glory of his
build--before he makes haste to hide himself in the sombre, ugly
trappings of convention. Kingston was in no haste to take that leap of
many centuries that separates man, as Nature set him forth, from the
clothed, shapeless dummy that man has made himself.
From the adjoining room his wife recalled him again and again to the
flight of time. She was never to be distracted from her duties by any
beauty or ugliness of the outer world. Had the Last Day dawned in
fire, Gundred would have duly finished having her hair done before
confronting it. There is a time for everything, she says, and all
reasonable people know that the time for looking at landscapes is
after lunch, while taking one’s afternoon drive, before going home
to tea and the second post. Then, at the proper moment, ecstasies are
allowable, and even suitable. But every minute of the day has its
task, and nothing can be plainer than that dressing-time is the time
to dress. Kingston, however, whistled idly at his desultory work, and
dawdled as if the whole forthcoming week were vacant. He loved the
young tenderness of the sunlight, and drew great breaths of life at
the open window. Overhead, and far away to the right, stretched along
the cliff a mighty, menacing shaft of darkness, the shadow of the huge
Castle behind. But this little old wing, on its spur of rock, jutted
so boldly out from the main mass of the building that all here was
radiance. Gundred, too, enjoyed the sun, but did not allow his ardours
to distract her from her duties. She had the white blinds pulled down,
and her toilet was cheered merely by a subdued consciousness of the
warmth outside. Then, when all was carefully and properly accomplished,
she made her way down twisting steps, and along a strip of corridor, to
the end of the wing, where the last two rooms on this ground-floor were
portioned off as dining-room and sitting-room. The whole arrangement
was quaint enough to please her, but neither so inconvenient nor so
unusual as to offend her sense of what was becoming. It was better than
living, sitting and dining, in the grim, mouldering halls of the Drum
Tower, or in the bald, chintz-hung rooms of the modern wings.
The unexpected booming of the gong roused Kingston to a sense of
time. With an effort he tore himself from his ecstatic contemplation,
and compressed the remainder of his toilet into half a dozen crowded
moments. Then, flurried, and filled with the feeling that he ought to
be apologetic, he hurried towards the dining-room.
He found his wife seated at the breakfast-table, decapitating a boiled
egg with her usual crisp neatness, which always suggested that she was
doing the egg a favour in making it an example of exactly how an egg
should be eaten. She was a lesson to the world. And he felt that she
knew it.
She, for her part, noticed immediately that his tie was under one ear,
that it was exceedingly ill-knotted, and that it was the wrong sort of
tie for that particular collar.
‘I thought I would begin, darling,’ said Gundred. ‘I did not know when
you would appear. Such a lovely morning--yes?’
Here, also, she had shown her appreciation of its loveliness by having
all the blinds drawn down. A muffled white radiance was all that she
allowed to reach her from outside.
Kingston, meanwhile, had been collecting letters and papers from the
sideboard.
‘Letters for you, my dear,’ he said; ‘three.’
‘Leave them there, darling, will you? I never look at my letters till
after breakfast. It is so nice to make a habit of everything--yes?’
Her husband, returning to the table, helped himself and sat down. For
a time the meal went forward in silence. Then he looked across at
his wife with intense approval. In the softened light Gundred looked
wonderfully pretty. The table was bare--a piece of oak too beautiful
to hide--and beyond its dark surface, where silver, glass, and white
china gleamed and glittered, Gundred’s head and shoulders rose in soft
relief against a very old painted panel on the further wall, a dim,
dingy portrait of King Henry the Seventh. Before her on the table stood
a bowl of pink and salmon-coloured sweet-peas. In the dim, primeval
room, in the quiet mellowed glow, she struck a note of exquisite
modernity. The curled gold of her hair, the small clear features, the
inconspicuously perfect gown harmonized, in the very audacity of their
contrast, with the ripened antiquity that surrounded her. She touched
another octave. From head to foot there was nothing about her to find
fault with. And, against such a background, her charm was seen more
whole and successful than in a garish setting of modern furniture and
other, showier women.
‘By Jove!’ said Kingston, ‘you do look extraordinary cool and
beautiful, Gundred. How do you manage it? I don’t believe you could
ever grow old!’
Gundred was pleased. Such comments had been growing too rare. But she
was one of those women who repel what they most desire, whether from
motives of mortification or allurement, it would at first sight be hard
to decide.
‘Nonsense, Kingston dear!’ she said; ‘one gets older every day. You
must really not try to make me vain.’
‘Never,’ replied her husband, ‘have I seen anyone who gave me the same
perfect feeling of satisfaction that you do. You always look as if you
had just come out of the smartest bandbox that was ever made. One can’t
realize that it’s all taken to pieces again every night.’
‘Don’t, dear,’ said Gundred. ‘You are always so exaggerated. I am so
glad I look nice, but it is only a matter of taking pains. Anybody can
be neat--yes?’
‘I couldn’t. If it weren’t for Andrews, I should always have odd socks
and boots, I am sure I should. I believe I am capable of wearing an
up-and-down collar in the evening if it was put out for me. What would
you do if I did, Gundred--divorce me on the spot?’
‘Darling, don’t talk so lightly about such a dreadful subject. God has
joined us together, and of course I should not think of divorcing you
if you came down to dinner in an up-and-down collar. It would be very
wrong of me. But, oh, Kingston dear, I do hope you never will. It is so
easy to be tidy. Your tie is all crooked this morning, dear.’
Her husband whistled instead of answering, as he helped himself to cold
ham. A man may let a woman mend his morals or his mind, but he would
rather suffer any reasonable torture than have it suspected that she
meddles with his clothes.
When Kingston returned to the table Gundred was ready with a renewed
supply of tea. ‘Nice and fresh and hot,’ she advertised. ‘Let me
give you another cup.’ She poured out for each, adding cream in fair
quantity to her own, and lavishly to her husband’s. This was a habitual
little silent proof of her love for him, and had no reference to the
fact that he particularly disliked cream in his tea. As for herself,
she expected Kingston always to remember and respect her avoidance of
sugar. But then his tastes were wrong, while hers were right. For he
was Kingston, a man: and she was Gundred, a good wife.
‘You’ve put cream in,’ protested Kingston, wrying his mouth at the
taste.
‘Have I, dear? I’m so sorry. Take my cup instead. I have not touched
it.’
She gave her cup a rapid final stir to make the cream disappear amid
the tea, then handed it to him, and watched complacently while he drank
it without any further complaint. She imagined that he was deceived,
and felt herself happily embarked on that career of small benevolent
falsehoods which make so necessary a part of the good wife’s success.
She foresaw innumerable ways of cheating him for his own good, of
making him eat veal in disguise, of teaching him to like rabbit by
serving it up as chicken cream. As a matter of fact he fully realized
what she had done, but knew that it was useless to make a protest.
He had learnt by now in a fortnight that all opposition to Gundred’s
ideas was unprofitable. She had a firm notion that cream was good for
him. Therefore cream he was evidently doomed to have, for the sake of
domestic peace--and in quantities, too, as generous as the love that
poured them out. Gundred had the bland pertinacity of the martyr,
combined with the imperturbable self-complacence of the Pharisee.
Before her gentle, inexorable determinations all hostile resolves were
as the stone which an incessant drip of water permeates and dissolves.
Kingston swallowed his polluted tea as quickly as possible; then,
breakfast being over, began to think of the day’s news. He offered his
wife a paper.
‘Letters first, thank you, dear,’ said Gundred, seating herself
concisely on a small, stiff-backed settle. She always preferred hard
and rigid furniture to the cushions and softnesses that nowadays
prevail. She felt them more virtuous, more decent, more suitable. She
turned towards her husband. ‘Take the arm-chair, dear,’ she said.
There was but one in the room that had any pretensions to comfort.
Kingston, finding that Gundred was determined to remain where she was,
settled himself in it with his papers.
‘Kingston, dear,’ pleaded his wife suddenly, ‘you won’t leave the
papers all anyhow on the floor, will you? It’s so untidy--yes?’
For answer he softly whistled a snatch, then, growing absorbed in the
news, began abstractedly to drum a small rhythm on the oaken floor.
Gundred bore it for a moment. Then a combined instinct of martyrdom and
love rebellious stirred her to action. She rose and picked up a small
cushion that happened to be on the settle, a bony little unyielding
square, prickly and stiff with embroideries that tradition attributed
to Queen Elizabeth.
‘A cushion, darling,’ said Gundred in level tones, standing behind his
chair. ‘Move your back--sit up a little, and let me arrange it for you.’
Her utterance, her action, were characteristic of her nature. The
utterance decorous, cold, impassive, the action springing from an
unresting love. Neither from her words nor from their inflection could
Kingston have guessed the warmth of the affection that beamed out of
her eyes as she stood looking down at the back of his neck with an
ardour which she would have been utterly ashamed to show to his face.
Only by such attentions as these, valuable as symptoms of her concealed
devotion, could Kingston ever make a guess at her feelings.
‘Thank you, dearest,’ he replied gratefully, shifting himself so as
to admit the insertion of Queen Elizabeth’s uncomfortable comfort. It
harassed him, its adamantine corners cut into his ribs and the small
of his back, but as an emblem of his wife’s tenderness he endured and
welcomed it. What she zealously concealed from him in word she was
perpetually anxious to reveal vicariously by such actions as these.
‘Thanks awfully,’ he repeated, then twisted round, so as to get a
glimpse of Gundred’s face. Instantly the light faded out of her eyes,
and all she allowed him to see was a decent wifely expression of
solicitude. He never divined that any other had been there.
But suddenly she permitted herself a word of self-betrayal.
‘I always want you to be comfortable, dear,’ she said. The words were
cool and coolly spoken, but under them lay the warmth of Gundred’s
secret nature.
Kingston, fired by such an advance, rose and swung round. He caught his
wife’s two hands--those charming hands that were never hot or cold.
‘I owe you something for that,’ he said, and kissed her twice.
Very gently Gundred drew herself away. Her heart was afire with
gratification, but she felt that every consideration of decency,
economy, and pride compelled her to conceal it. To be made cheap was
the last horror that her mind could imagine; and all outward displays
seemed to level her with kitchen-maids and factory-girls.
‘Don’t be so boisterous, darling,’ she remonstrated, while her heart
longed to thank him for what he had done, and beg him to do it again.
In the daytime, however, the invisible audience before whom she lived
forbade these manifestations; only under the cover of darkness could
she feel them permissible. ‘It is too early in the day,’ said Gundred,
patting into place a curl that had never been out of it.
Not for the first time Kingston sighed and found himself baffled by
his wife’s perpetual assumption of virginity. Beyond the reach of
all allowed caresses, her soul remained untouched, immaculate. The
bloodless chastity of temperament that invested this last of Queen
Isabel’s offspring was for ever a barrier between man and wife. And
neither Kingston nor Gundred had any doubt as to whether the barrier
were natural or artificial. Both believed it an essential part of
Gundred’s nature. If Gundred herself ever doubted, she stifled the
doubt as ill-bred, repulsive, almost irreligious.
‘Ice-house!’ cried Kingston. ‘One may kiss your lips, but the real you
is far away beyond the reach of kisses.’
Gundred knew that this was not true, longed to deny it, yet was glad
that her husband thought it. She was taking a shamefaced, almost
fierce delight in the dialogue. For once her correct coldness had
proved a challenge. Too often she had grieved that the low temperature
of her behaviour was passing unregretted, unnoticed, and was even
beginning to lower the temperature of her lover. Cold she still wished
to be, for pride and decorum, yet without paying any of the penalties.
The personal intimacy that one aspect of marriage enforces only the
more impelled her soul, for the sake of its stiff self-respect, to take
refuge in all possible mental reservations and seclusions, by way of
indemnifying itself and justifying itself for the other candours into
which Nature had driven her, not unwilling, indeed, but always feeling
that she ought to be unwilling. Gundred’s temperament was civilized
very far below the surface, and the rough facts of life never ceased
to strike her as monstrous and barbaric. And most barbarous of all was
her own surprised acquiescence. She could only recapture her vanishing
dignity by emphasizing at every possible moment the immaculate
maidenhood of her mind. This was at once her revenge on Nature, and
on herself for loving what Nature sent. But her husband could not
understand these subtleties; no clue was given him to the labyrinth of
Gundred’s hidden emotions; he took her at her face-value, and imagined
her as deeply, incurably frigid as was the manner that she thought
proper to assume.
He stood before her, still holding her hands, gazing hotly into the
depths of her cool eyes. But now they gave him no answering light.
Shallow, clear, and cold, they met his own without a tremor. No soul
looked out of them.
‘The real you,’ he repeated at last, after a long pause--‘the real you.
Where is it, I wonder? Or is there any such thing? I thought once I
could thaw you, but one can’t thaw an icicle unless one can get near
it.’
The passion of his speech pleased her no less than the success
of her own decorous hypocrisy. Now evidently she was winning the
demonstrations for which she secretly hungered, and without any
sacrifice of her pudicity.
She drew her hands away.
‘Let me go, dear,’ she said, with mild decision. ‘You make me feel
hot and rumpled. If you want to kiss me--well, I suppose I am your
wife--yes?’
The tacit invitation, the unexpressed desire, were too successfully
concealed by the decorous dullness of her tone. He read into it
annoyance and disgust. Abruptly the flame of his mood was extinguished.
He dropped her hands, so suddenly that they, not expecting any such
desertion, hung limp and disappointed for a moment in the air.
‘Sorry to have bothered you,’ he said. ‘I suppose I am too rough.’
Without another word he subsided again into his chair, and fell to
reading the paper. Gundred retired to her settle, feeling how glad
she ought to feel thus triumphantly to have vindicated her sense of
decency. But her satisfaction was hollow; her soul had received a
shock when her hands had been so suddenly dropped--a nasty jarring
shock such as one receives in a dream, stepping into vacancy where
one had expected solid ground. Her hands fell slowly to her sides,
cheated, frustrated; then set languidly about opening her letters, as
if diverted from their proper use. It was a minute or two before she
could concentrate her attention. In her turn she experienced something
of that snubbed, humiliated sensation which she had so often inflicted
on her husband. Then good training conquered personal disappointment,
and she began to read. In an instant her attention was chained.
‘Kingston,’ she cried, looking up, ‘here is a letter from Isabel
Darrell, of all people in the world. She wants to pay us a visit. Why,
I declare,’ she added, ‘Isabel writes from London. I must say she loses
no time.’
‘Isabel Darrell?’ questioned Kingston. ‘Who is she, and what does
she want with us--especially now, when we are supposed to be on our
honeymoon?’
‘My cousin,’ Gundred reminded him. ‘Her mother was my father’s sister,
Isabel Mortimer. Don’t you remember, I told you about her? Poor Aunt
Isabel! She married a dreadful man who came over from Australia or New
Zealand, and took her back there, and led her a most terrible life, I
am afraid. Aunt Isabel died three years ago, and now her husband seems
to have died, too, and the daughter has come to England to see her own
people. We shall have to have her here, Kingston. I must write at once.
I’ll let her have a line by this morning’s post. But I do wish Aunt
Agnes ever wrote letters: we ought to have heard of Isabel’s arrival at
least a week ago. We must certainly send for her at once.’
Gundred wanted her husband to protest against this sacrifice of their
privacy, perhaps to forbid it. If he had done so, she would have
resisted his objections, and eventually have made a wifely virtue of
yielding to them. But the best of people are not without their small
ungenerosities, and Kingston Darnley was in a mood to punish his wife
for her obstinate chilliness. If their privacy were to give no real
intimacy, it might just as well cease.
‘Capital!’ said Kingston. ‘We want someone to liven us up a bit. Write
to your cousin and tell her to come here at once. She’ll be someone for
you to talk to.’
‘Won’t she--yes?’ assented Gundred, wounded indeed, but quite
successful in concealing the fact. ‘Poor thing! I will send her a
wire. She can be here by dinner-time. How odd of her, though, to think
one likes being interrupted on one’s honeymoon! Do you suppose they do
that kind of thing in the colonies?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I dare say she heard we had been here for more than
a fortnight, and thought we must have had about enough of it.’
‘Well, it will be very nice. Would you like to see her letter?’
‘I don’t mind,’ answered Kingston indifferently. In the circumstances
wild horses would not have forced him to confess how much he resented
the invasion. Not even to himself would he confess it. But already he
had conceived a keen dislike for his cousin, Isabel Darrell.
‘Quite an odd letter,’ commented Gundred; ‘not at all like anyone
else’s. My poor aunt was always strange and eccentric--evidently Isabel
takes after her mother.’
‘Let me see,’ said Kingston, in the hope of finding something to feed
his feeling for Isabel Darrell.
Gundred handed him the letter. It was written in a large, flamboyant
hand, on large flamboyant paper; twirls and flourishes abounded, and
the signature was written with a sprawling arrogance that might have
done credit to a second-rate actress.
‘DEAR MY COUSIN,’ it began,
‘I have come to England at last, to enter the bosom of my family.
My father, to the relief of everybody, has entered Abraham’s. Don’t
think me flippant, but one cannot always mourn, not even for the
worst of parents. Meanwhile, here am I in London, buying frocks so
as not to disgrace my family. When can I come to you? As soon as
you like. A wire will fetch me. I understand that your honeymoon is
nearly over, so I don’t suppose a casual third will be much of a
nuisance by now. And, anyhow, I have nowhere else to go. I am dying
to see Brakelond, too, and the ducal great-uncle. Aunt Agnes and I
have had quite enough of each other in a week, but she has been doing
her duty nobly by the returned prodigal. Really, she is too weird for
words. I believe she thinks New Zealand is the capital of Australia,
or else the other way round.
‘Your affectionate and only cousin,
‘ISABEL DARRELL, OF THE MORTIMERS.’
Kingston found himself amply justified in his dislike. Underbred, loud,
vulgar, evidently Isabel Darrell was a very undesirable specimen of the
colonial. Her clashing presence would teach him anew to appreciate the
quiet perfection of Gundred. He returned the letter with a laugh.
‘So very odd--yes?’ said Gundred; ‘just like her poor dear mother.
Aunt Isabel was just the same--so flaunting, and independent, and
unconventional. Isabel must be the oddest girl.’
‘She sounds a shocking bounder,’ said Kingston.
‘She is my cousin, dear,’ said Gundred, very gently, after a slight
pause. The emphasis was slight but unmistakable. Another pause followed.
‘And when are we to expect that sacrosanct person, your cousin?’
inquired Kingston, who knew nothing of that calm loyalty which people
of Gundred’s sort display towards even the most despised and detested
of their relations when they come up for discussion in the presence of
anyone unconnected with ‘the family.’
‘Isabel? Ring, dear, for Murchison, and I will send a wire. She will
have time to catch the midday train, and we shall have her here in good
time to dress for dinner. But of course she won’t be able to see poor
Uncle Henry.’
Kingston rang, feeling himself powerless to avert the coming of this
discordant, pestilent alien, and Murchison was duly entrusted with
the telegram. As soon as it had gone both Kingston and Gundred began
to feel injured, and by common consent forbore to say another word
about Isabel Darrell. Gundred felt herself aggrieved that her husband
should so readily and with such apparent gladness have consented to the
invasion of a stranger; Kingston felt himself aggrieved that Gundred
should so gladly and with such apparent readiness have suggested the
importation of a third person. Each thought the other bored with the
honeymoon; neither was, but the one from offended pride, and the other
from conscientious delicacy considered it a duty to make the pretence;
and, each concealing his feeling strictly from the other, husband and
wife drew deliberately apart to make room for the figure of Isabel
Darrell between them.
The day drifted by in colourless talk, and the fine splendour of the
morning grew clouded with a leaden haze. Kingston and Gundred sat out
the hours in the small close garden that was shut in by the Castle.
Their own little oaken wing jutted away ahead of them, but the line
of the cliff, before it ran out in that unexpected spur, was enclosed
by three old towers of the building, and here, in the square levelled
space, looking straight over the boundless sea, with a battlemented
wall of windows behind, and the Drum Tower glooming high over it in
the background, had been made the only patch of garden that existed
to give light and life to the grey mountain of masonry. The little
flowery patch, gay with sweet-peas and roses, seemed as discordant
with the Castle as a bow of ribbon on the brow of a precipice. It was
frivolous, impertinent, saucy in its defiance of the stern greyness
that it adorned. The only fit colours to relieve the sombre majesty
of Brakelond were those of blood and fire, not those of grass and
flowers. But the contradiction was so flagrant as to be fascinating,
and the lovers took daily joy in this little impudent oasis.
However, their unuttered thoughts of the new-comer dominated every
remark they made, and it was a relief when evening drew near, and
each minute brought nearer and nearer the abrupt termination of their
solitude. Isabel had telegraphed her joy at being permitted to come,
and her intention to do so immediately. Orders were given to prepare
for her, and she was expected to arrive in time to dress for dinner.
When, therefore, the carriage returned empty from the station, six
miles away, after having kept dinner waiting for half an hour, both
Kingston and Gundred felt their grievances redoubled. Kingston saw
how right he had been to detest the very notion of this disorderly
stranger, and Gundred realized more than ever how slack and neglectful
of her husband it had been not to forbid the importation of such a
disconcerting element into their ordered tranquillity. Meanwhile a
telegram arrived, explaining that Isabel had lost her train, had
taken a ‘special,’ and hoped to arrive in an hour or so. Again the
carriage was sent, and, after another tedious interval of expectation
the lovers were told that its lights could be seen returning up the
hill. To ease the arrival of a shy, desolate colonial Gundred decided
to receive her in the great hall itself. Accordingly, at the news,
Kingston and Gundred passed on through the dim, gaunt passages of
outwork and bastion until they found themselves at last in the heart
of the big Drum Tower. The hall was a vast flagged expanse, walled
in by high, dusty glooms, into whose recesses no light of any feeble
lamp or lantern could penetrate. Grime and weary antiquity seemed to
permeate it, and the air was close and heavy with a scent of mouldered
greatness. Kingston, as he went, began insensibly to play a game with
himself. He picked out the names of four moods, to be repeated to
himself, one for each flag on which he trod; and his fate, his whole
attitude to Isabel was to be foretold by the paving-stone on which his
foot should rest at the instant of the new-comer’s alighting. His fancy
was taken from the game which children play with their cherry-stones,
and the moods he chose were ‘Love, Hate, Fear, Contempt.’ In turn he
repeated them as he stepped from flag to flag, careful always never to
set his foot on any boundary line. ‘Love, Hate, Fear, Contempt,’ he
murmured inwardly from stone to stone, while Gundred walked briskly
at his side, her clear mind a hundred years removed from any such
silly infantile fantasies. Now they were drawing near the huge, gaping
doorway. There were not so many of the great squares left to tread, and
the jingling approach of the carriage could be more and more clearly
heard. Kingston’s heart began to beat with the artificial excitement
of his game. ‘Love, Hate, Fear, Contempt....’ The carriage had driven
up.... ‘Love, Hate, Fear, Contempt....’ He lingered, hoping that the
stranger would alight appropriately on the word ‘Contempt.’ In vain.
There was some delay. Perforce he must advance to the three or four
remaining flag-stones. Quickly, to get it over without danger, he
hurried with a long stride on to the stone that meant ‘Love,’ eager to
leap to the next. But the unconscious Isabel was quicker. As his foot
was set on ‘Love,’ Isabel jumped untidily from the carriage. Kingston
laughed internally. ‘So much for fate,’ he thought; then, calmed again,
he advanced with Gundred to meet the stranger. In the flickering light,
among the draughts that swirled in the high cavern of darkness, his
first impression was of a limp, floppy hat, bulged, overtrodden boots,
and a deplorable draggled tippet. Greetings were hurriedly exchanged,
and Kingston felt justified of all his hostile forebodings. Awkward,
shapeless, inopportune, tawdry,--‘Contempt’ or ‘Hate’ should certainly
have been his footing with regard to Isabel Darrell.