Yes, he was certainly handsome, remarkably handsome even, for a man whose youth was past; but there was something in his face, a something sinister and secret, as it were, which did not strike Mrs. Tadman favourably.  She could not by any means have explained the nature of her sensations on looking at him, but, as she said afterwards, she felt all in a moment that he was there for no good.  And yet he was very civil-spoken too, and addressed both the ladies in a most conciliating tone, and with a kind of florid politeness.

Ellen looked at him, interested for the moment in spite of her apathetic indifference to all things.  The advent of a stranger was something so rare as to awaken a faint interest in the mind most dead to impressions.  She did not like his manner; there was something false and hollow in his extreme politeness.  And his face—­what was it in his face that startled her with such a sudden sense of strangeness and yet of familiarity?

Had she ever seen him before?  Yes; surely that was the impression which sent such a sudden shook through her nerves, which startled her from her indifference into eager wonder and perplexity.  Where had she seen him before?  Where and when?  Long ago, or only very lately?  She could not tell.  Yet it seemed to her that she had looked at eyes like those, not once, but many times in her life.  And yet the man was utterly strange to her.  That she could have seen him before appeared impossible.  It must have been some one like him she had seen, then.  Yes, that was it.  It was the shadow of another face in his that had startled her with so strange a feeling, almost as if she had been looking upon some ghostly thing.  Another face, like and yet unlike.

But what face? whose face?

She could not answer that question, and her inability to solve the enigma tormented her all tea-time, as the stranger sat opposite to her, making a pretence of eating heartily, in accordance with Mr. Whitelaw’s hospitable invitation, while that gentleman himself ploughed away with a steady persistence that made awful havoc with the ham, and reduced the loaf in a manner suggestive of Jack the Giant-killer.

The visitor presently ventured to remark that tea-drinking was not much in his way, and that, if it were all the same to Mr. Whitelaw, he should prefer a glass of brandy-and-water; whereupon the brandy-bottle was produced from a cupboard by the fire-place, of which Stephen himself kept the key, judiciously on his guard against a possible taste for ardent spirits developing itself in Mrs. Tadman.

After this the stranger sat for some time, drinking cold brandy-and-water, and staring moodily at the fire, without making the faintest attempt at conversation, while Mr. Whitelaw finished his tea, and the table was cleared; and even after this, when the farmer had taken his place upon the opposite side of the hearth, and seemed to be waiting for his guest to begin business.