“Well, you know, sir,—”
“I do. Go up, and announce me.”
The man led the way, and Mr. Wingfold followed. He opened the door of a room on the first floor, and announced him. Mr. Wingfold entered immediately, that there might be no time for words with the man and a message of refusal.
Discouragement encountered him on the threshold. The lady sat by a blazing fire, with her back to a window through which the frosty sun of February was sending lovely prophecies of the summer. She was in a gorgeous dressing-gown, her plentiful black hair twisted carelessly, but with a show of defiance, round her head. She was almost a young woman still, with a hardness of expression that belonged neither to youth nor age. She sat sideways to the door, so that without turning her head she must have seen the parson enter, but she did not move a visible hair's-breadth. Her feet, in silk stockings and shabby slippers, continued perched on the fender. She made no sign of greeting when the parson came in front of her, but a scowl dark as night settled on her low forehead and black eyebrows, and her face shortened and spread out. Wingfold approached her with the air of a man who knew himself unwelcome but did not much mind—for he had not to care about himself.
“Good morning, Mrs. Wylder!” he said. “What a lovely morning it is!”
“Is it? I know nothing about it. You have a brutal climate!”
He knew she regarded him as the objectionable agent of a more objectionable Heaven.
“You would not dislike it so much if you met it out of doors. A walk on a day like this, now,—”
“Pray who authorized you to come and offer me advice I Have I concealed from you, Mr. Wingfold, that your presence gives me no pleasure?”
“You certainly have not! You have been quite honest with me. I did not come in the hope of pleasing you—though I wish I could.”