When I reached the house the little maid who opened the door informed me that Uncle Max was in his study:  it was a large room with a bow-window overlooking the garden, and I knew Uncle Max never used any other room except for his meals.  I had volunteered to announce myself.  I was never formal with Max, so I knocked at the door, and, without waiting to hear his voice in reply, marched in without ceremony.

But the next moment I stood discomfited on the threshold, for instead of Uncle Max’s familiar face I saw a dark, closely-cropped head bending over the table as though searching for something, and the ruddy firelight reflected the broad shoulders and hairless profile of the obnoxious Mr. Hamilton.

My first idea was to escape, and my fingers were already on the door-handle, when he turned abruptly and saw me.  ‘I beg your pardon,’ coming towards me and speaking in the deep peculiar voice I had already heard.  ’I was hunting for the matches that Cunliffe always mislays.  You are Miss Garston, are you not?  I was told to expect you.’  And then he actually shook hands with me in an off-hand way.

I am not generally devoid of presence of mind, but at that moment I behaved as awkwardly as a school-girl.  If I could only have thought of some excuse for leaving him,—­an errand or a message to Mrs. Drabble; but no form of words would occur to me.  I could only mutter an apology for my abrupt entrance, and ask after Uncle Max, stammering with confusion all the time, and then take the chair he was placing for me, while he renewed his search for the match-box.

’Oh, Cunliffe has only gone down to the village to post his letters:  he will be back in a few minutes.  Ah! here are the matches.  Now we shall be able to see each other.’  And he coolly lighted Uncle Max’s reading-lamp and two candles, and stirred the fire with such a vigorous hand that the huge lump of coal splintered into fragments.

’There; I do like a mighty blaze.  Take that newspaper, Miss Garston, if the flame scorches your face.  I know young ladies are afraid of their complexions.’  Why need he have said that, as though my brown skin were Sara’s pretty pink cheeks?  ’Why do you not throw off your wraps if the room be too hot?’ And he spoke so imperatively that I actually obeyed him, and got rid of my hat and ulster, which he deposited on the couch.

I did not like the look of Mr. Hamilton any better than I had liked it yesterday.  His dark, smoothly-shaven face was not to my taste; it looked stern and forbidding.  He had a low forehead, and there was a hard set look about the mouth, and the eyes were almost disagreeable in their keenness.

Perhaps I was prejudiced, but he looked to me like a man who rarely laughed, and who would take a pleasure in saying bitter things; his voice was not unpleasant, but it had a peculiar depth in it, and now and then there was an odd break in it that was almost a hesitation.