collar; otherwise, he had on the rusty black clothes in which he ordinarily
went about his affairs,--the cassimere pantaloons, the satin vest, and the
dress-coat which old-fashioned country lawyers still wore ten years ago, in
preference to a frock or sack. He stopped on one of the lower steps, and
looked sharply down into her uplifted face, and, as they stood confronted,
their consanguinity came out in vivid resemblances and contrasts; his high,
hawk-like profile was translated into the fine aquiline outline of hers;
the harsh rings of black hair, now grizzled with age, which clustered
tightly over his head, except where they had retreated from his deeply
seamed and wrinkled forehead, were the crinkled flow above her smooth white
brow; and the line of the bristly tufts that overhung his eyes was the same
as that of the low arches above hers. Her complexion was from her mother;
his skin was dusky yellow; but they had the same mouth, and hers showed how
sweet his mouth must have been in his youth. His eyes, deep sunk in their
cavernous sockets, had rekindled their dark fires in hers; his whole
visage, softened to her sex and girlish years, looked up at him in his
daughter's face.

"Why, father! Did we wake you?"

"No. I hadn't been asleep at all. I was coming down to read. But it's time
you were in bed, Marcia."

"Yes, I'm going, now. There's a good fire in the parlor stove."

The old man descended the remaining steps, but turned at the parlor door,
and looked again at his daughter with a glance that arrested her, with her
foot on the lowest stair.

"Marcia," he asked, grimly, "are you engaged to Bartley Hubbard?"