It was the face of a young man evidently of high capacity and unflinching resolution. A slight moustache brushed the upper lip, and set off a clear-cut but somewhat cruel mouth. A more completely independent expression I never saw. The lineaments obscured by time defied accurate survey, but the general effect produced was that they indicated an arbitrary and domineering soul, utterly impatient of control and loftily contemptuous of its kind.
I was carefully conning the face when I heard the garden-gate creak on its hinges, a sound followed by the rattle of a latch-key in the lock of the front door. Mrs. Hartmann had returned. Passing into the room, she met me with a pleasant smile which showed up in curious contrast to the look of depression so familiar to me of yore. I interpreted that brightness in an instant. Hartmann had returned, and had paid her the visit of one raised from the dead. But of his terrible designs, of his restless hatred of society, he had clearly told her nothing.
Hers was an expressive face, and the shadows upon it were few enough to warrant that inference. Probably he had smoothed over the past and fooled her with some talk of a reformed life and a changed creed. It is so easy for an only son to persuade a mother—particularly when he rises after long years from a supposed grave.
“Well, Mr. Stanley, you are the last person I expected to see. I heard you were to be in Paris to-day.”
“So, my dear Mrs. Hartmann, I was, but the Northertons, you see, have returned, and I had hoped to have done some touring with the old gentleman.”
“Or perhaps with Miss Lena. No, don’t look so innocent, for she tells me more than you think. But what of this return? I had a note from her when she was in Paris, but she said nothing about it?”
“Some will business,” I explained. “You will be glad to hear she comes in for £5000 by it.”
“A nice little nest-egg to begin house-keeping upon. I think, Mr. Stanley, you two young people ought to do very well.”
“I hope so,” I said, foregoing useless secrecy—what a chatterbox Lena could be! “At any rate I see no very dangerous rocks ahead at present.”
The conversation wandered for some time among various topics, when I mentioned that I had been looking over the album.