The parlour was rather a small room, very plainly furnished, yet comfortable, because clean and neat.  The old-fashioned chairs were very bright, and the walnut-wood table was like a looking-glass.  A few strange, antique portraits of the men and women of other days decorated the stained walls; a cupboard with glass doors contained some books and an ancient set of china.  There was no superfluous ornament in the room —­ not one modern piece of furniture, save a brace of workboxes and a lady’s desk in rosewood, which stood on a side-table:  everything —­ including the carpet and curtains —­ looked at once well worn and well saved.

Mr. St. John —­ sitting as still as one of the dusty pictures on the walls, keeping his eyes fixed on the page he perused, and his lips mutely sealed —­ was easy enough to examine.  Had he been a statue instead of a man, he could not have been easier.  He was young —­ perhaps from twenty-eight to thirty —­ tall, slender; his face riveted the eye; it was like a Greek face, very pure in outline:  quite a straight, classic nose; quite an Athenian mouth and chin.  It is seldom, indeed, an English face comes so near the antique models as did his.  He might well be a little shocked at the irregularity of my lineaments, his own being so harmonious.  His eyes were large and blue, with brown lashes; his high forehead, colourless as ivory, was partially streaked over by careless locks of fair hair.

This is a gentle delineation, is it not, reader?  Yet he whom it describes scarcely impressed one with the idea of a gentle, a yielding, an impressible, or even of a placid nature.  Quiescent as he now sat, there was something about his nostril, his mouth, his brow, which, to my perceptions, indicated elements within either restless, or hard, or eager.  He did not speak to me one word, nor even direct to me one glance, till his sisters returned.  Diana, as she passed in and out, in the course of preparing tea, brought me a little cake, baked on the top of the oven.

“Eat that now,” she said:  “you must be hungry.  Hannah says you have had nothing but some gruel since breakfast.”

I did not refuse it, for my appetite was awakened and keen.  Mr. Rivers now closed his book, approached the table, and, as he took a seat, fixed his blue pictorial-looking eyes full on me.  There was an unceremonious directness, a searching, decided steadfastness in his gaze now, which told that intention, and not diffidence, had hitherto kept it averted from the stranger.

“You are very hungry,” he said.

“I am, sir.”  It is my way —­ it always was my way, by instinct —­ ever to meet the brief with brevity, the direct with plainness.

“It is well for you that a low fever has forced you to abstain for the last three days:  there would have been danger in yielding to the cravings of your appetite at first.  Now you may eat, though still not immoderately.”