Page:Son of the wind.djvu/60

 As he signed these initials a gentle knock came on the door and a low voice spoke— "Alex, here's your candle. I suppose you will sit up. I'm going to bed."

The scholar glanced at Carron. "I'd better tell her," he murmured. He opened the door. "Hermione!" he called. The flowery sound—name of an ideal woman in a tale—struck quaintly on Carron's ears.

Mrs. Rader was already half-way down the passage. She paused, looking back, lamp in hand, while Rader walked toward her. From the threshold of the study Carron could see them conferring there in the flickering light and shadow. There was something charming, winning in the scholar, in the very slouch of his figure, with its loose-hanging clothes; something pathetic and appealing in the woman's face, tired now at the end of her day's work, and in her brown dubious-glancing eyes. They had been looking up toward her husband; but suddenly she turned them toward Carron with a furtive, half-frightened look—not one she had meant him to see; an involuntary look that had got away from her.

It disturbed him, that any woman should regard him in that way. He had a hasty impulse to reassure her that there was nothing in his presence that need alarm her. The look was withdrawn almost before he could take it in, but the impression of it