Bella Donna - A Novel by Robert Smythe Hichens
page 35 of 765 (04%)
page 35 of 765 (04%)
|
The door opened, and the last guest appeared--a man, tall, broad-chested, and fair, with short yellow hair parted in the middle, a well-shaped head, a blunt, straight nose, a well-defined but not obstinate chin, a sensitive mouth, and big, sincere, even enthusiastic, blue eyes, surmounted by thick blond eyebrows that always looked as if they had just been brushed vigorously upwards. A small, close-growing moustache covered his upper lip. His cheeks and forehead were tanned by the sun. He was thirty-six years old, but looked a great deal younger, because he was fair. His figure was very muscular and upright, with a hollow back and lean flanks. His capable, rather large-fingered, but not clumsy, hands were brown. There was in his face a peculiarly straight and bright look that suggested the North and Northern things, the glitter of stars upon snows, cool summits of mountains swept by pure winds, the scented freshness of pine forests. He had something of the expression, of the build, and of the carriage of a hero from the North. But he was surely a hero from the North who had very recently had his dwelling in the South, and who had taken kindly to it. When Lady Somerson saw the newcomer, she rushed at him and blew him up. Then she introduced him to the lady he was to take in to dinner, and, with an alacrity that was almost feverish, gave the signal for her guests to move into the dining-room, disclosed at this moment by two assiduous footmen who briskly pushed back the sliding doors that divided it from the room in which she had received. "Our hostess does not conceal her feelings," murmured Mrs. Derringham, who was Doctor Isaacson's companion, as they found their places at the long table. "Who is the man whom she has just scolded so vivaciously? I know his face quite well." |
|