Page:A pair of blue eyes (1873 Volume 1).pdf/20

6 The point in Elfride Swancourt's life at which a deeper current may be said to have permanently se tin, was on winter afternoon when she found herself standing, in the character of hostess, face to face with a man she had never seen before—moreover, looking at him with a Miranda-like curiosity and interest that she had never yet bestowed on a mortal.

On this particular day her father, the vicar of a remote country parish, and a widower, was suffering from an attack of gout. After finishing her household supervisions, Elfride became restless, and several times left the room, ascended the staircase, and knocked at her father's bedroom-door.

'Come in!' was always answered in a hearty farmer-like voice from inside.

'Papa,' she said on one occasion to the fine, red-faced, handsome man of forty, who, puffing and fizzing like a bursting bottle, lay on the bed wrapped in a dressing-gown, and