The Half-Hearted | Page 6

very practical young person, a scorner of modes and trivialities, and yet
she had taken unusual care with her toilet this evening, and had spent
many minutes before the glass. Looking at herself carefully, a growing
conviction began to be confirmed--that she was really rather pretty. She
had reddish-brown hair and--a rare conjunction--dark eyes and
eyebrows and a delicate colour. As a small girl she had lamented
bitterly the fate that bad not given her the orthodox beauty of the dark
or fair maiden, and in her school days she had passed for plain. Now it
began to dawn on her that she had beauty of a kind--the charm of
strangeness; and her slim strong figure had the grace which a
wholesome life alone can give. She was in high spirits, curious,
interested, and generous. The people amused her, the place was a
fairyland and outside the golden weather lay still and fragrant among

the hills.
When she came down to the drawing-room she found the whole party
assembled. A tall man with a brown beard and a slight stoop ceased to
assault the handle of a firescreen and came over to greet her. He had
only come back half an hour ago, he explained, and so had missed her
arrival. The face attracted and soothed her. Abundant kindness lurked
in the humorous brown eyes, and a queer pucker on the brow gave him
the air of a benevolent despot. If this was Lord Manorwater, she had no
further dread of the great ones of the earth. There were four other men,
two of them mild, spectacled people, who had the air of students and a
precise affected mode of talk, and one a boy cousin of whom no one
took the slightest notice. The fourth was a striking figure, a man of
about forty in appearance, tall and a little stout, with a rugged face
which in some way suggested a picture of a prehistoric animal in an old
natural history she had owned. The high cheek-bones, large nose, and
slightly protruding eyes had an unfinished air about them, as if their
owner had escaped prematurely from a mould. A quantity of bushy
black hair--which he wore longer than most men-enhanced the dramatic
air of his appearance. It was a face full of vigour and a kind of strength,
shrewd, a little coarse, and solemn almost to the farcical. He was
introduced in a rush of words by the hostess, but beyond the fact that it
was a monosyllable, Alice did not catch his name.
Lord Manorwater took in Miss Afflint, and Alice fell to the dark man
with the monosyllabic name. He had a way of bowing over his hand
which slightly repelled the girl, who had no taste for elaborate manners.
His first question, too, displeased her. He asked her if she was one of
the Wisharts of some unpronounceable place.
She replied briefly that she did not know. Her grandfathers on both
sides had been farmers.
The gentleman bowed with the smiling unconcern of one to whom
pedigree is a matter of course.
"I have heard often of your father," he said. "He is one of the local
supports of the party to which I have the honour to belong. He

represents one great section of our retainers, our host another. I am glad
to see such friendship between the two." And he smiled elaborately
from Alice to Lord Manorwater.
Alice was uncomfortable. She felt she must be sitting beside some very
great man, and she was tortured by vain efforts to remember the
monosyllable which had stood for his name. She did not like his voice,
and, great man or not, she resented the obvious patronage. He spoke
with a touch of the drawl which is currently supposed to belong only to
the half-educated classes of England.
She turned to the boy who sat on the other side of her. The young
gentleman--his name was Arthur and, apparently, nothing else--was
only too ready to talk. He proceeded to explain, compendiously, his
doings of the past week, to which the girl listened politely. Then
anxiety got the upper hand, and she asked in a whisper, a propos of
nothing in particular, the name of her left-hand neighbour.
"They call him Stocks," said the boy, delighted at the tone of
confidence, and was going on to sketch the character of the gentleman
in question when Alice cut him short.
"Will you take me to fish some day?" she asked.
"Any day," gasped the hilarious Arthur. "I'm ready, and I'll tell you
what, I know the very burn--" and he babbled on happily till he saw
that Miss Wishart had ceased to listen. It was the first time a pretty girl
had shown herself desirous of his company, and he