Page:Son of the wind.djvu/168

RV 154 that morning, in the golden vapor of dust, but now it had become a place of low-set lights and long, pointed, radiating shadows. Thus the ceiling, which he recalled as hideously papered and the settees and what-nots around the wall were lost in a fringe of darkness. What one saw most clearly was the polished top of the card table, illuminated by its cluster of candles; the chairs drawn around it, the fireplace with its glow and in all the windows reflections of little pointed flames.

Mrs. Rader stood looking at these things, wistful and astonished. She seemed to doubt them, to admire them, to think that they would scarcely do, and Carron's suggestion that the arrangement would certainly promote conversation only turned her eyes upon him with the same expression, as if he had been the most important effect in the room, therefore a little more alien than the rest. What had become of their familiarity of the afternoon? If she had not quite resumed her old, distant manner, she seemed to be struggling to do so. He was uncomfortable, an interloping boarder who should not have appeared in this gathering of a family and its friend; but he was more amused than uncomfortable at Mrs. Rader's manner of waiting and listening apprehensively. He wondered whether it was Ferrier or her daughter she was so nervously expecting; but