It was verging on dusk, and the clock had already given warning of the hour to dress for dinner, when little Adele, who knelt by me in the drawing-room window-seat, suddenly exclaimed —

“Voile, Monsieur Rochester, qui revient!”

I turned, and Miss Ingram darted forwards from her sofa:  the others, too, looked up from their several occupations; for at the same time a crunching of wheels and a splashing tramp of horse-hoofs became audible on the wet gravel.  A post-chaise was approaching.

“What can possess him to come home in that style?” said Miss Ingram.  “He rode Mesrour (the black horse), did he not, when he went out? and Pilot was with him:- what has he done with the animals?”

As she said this, she approached her tall person and ample garments so near the window, that I was obliged to bend back almost to the breaking of my spine:  in her eagerness she did not observe me at first, but when she did, she curled her lip and moved to another casement.  The post-chaise stopped; the driver rang the door-bell, and a gentleman alighted attired in travelling garb; but it was not Mr. Rochester; it was a tall, fashionable-looking man, a stranger.

“How provoking!” exclaimed Miss Ingram:  “you tiresome monkey!” (apostrophising Adele), “who perched you up in the window to give false intelligence?” and she cast on me an angry glance, as if I were in fault.

Some parleying was audible in the hall, and soon the new-comer entered.  He bowed to Lady Ingram, as deeming her the eldest lady present.

“It appears I come at an inopportune time, madam,” said he, “when my friend, Mr. Rochester, is from home; but I arrive from a very long journey, and I think I may presume so far on old and intimate acquaintance as to instal myself here till he returns.”

His manner was polite; his accent, in speaking, struck me as being somewhat unusual, —­ not precisely foreign, but still not altogether English:  his age might be about Mr. Rochester’s, —­ between thirty and forty; his complexion was singularly sallow:  otherwise he was a fine-looking man, at first sight especially.  On closer examination, you detected something in his face that displeased, or rather that failed to please.  His features were regular, but too relaxed:  his eye was large and well cut, but the life looking out of it was a tame, vacant life —­ at least so I thought.

The sound of the dressing-bell dispersed the party.  It was not till after dinner that I saw him again:  he then seemed quite at his ease.  But I liked his physiognomy even less than before:  it struck me as being at the same time unsettled and inanimate.  His eye wandered, and had no meaning in its wandering:  this gave him an odd look, such as I never remembered to have seen.  For a handsome and not an unamiable-looking man, he repelled me exceedingly:  there was no power in that smooth-skinned face of a full oval shape:  no firmness in that aquiline nose and small cherry mouth; there was no thought on the low, even forehead; no command in that blank, brown eye.