What surprised her--for she had heard him described as "a hard man in business"-- was the suggestion of the scholar in his appearance.
With his narrow, carefully brushed head, his dreamy and rather wistful blue eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses, his stooping, slender shoulders, and his long, delicate hands covered with prominent veins, he ought to have been either a poet or a philosopher.
"You must be happy with us, my dear," he had said to Gabriella, showing a minute later such gentle eagerness to return to a part of the newspaper which Gabriella had never read and did not understand, that his wife remarked pityingly: "Read your paper, Archibald, and don't let our chatter disturb you.

There are a thousand things I want to say to the children." "Well, it's time for me to be going, Evelyn," Mr.Fowler responded, reluctantly folding the pages; "I'll look into this on the way down." "Remember, dear, that Judge Crowborough is coming to dinner." "I'll remember.

Is there any one else ?" "Mrs.Crowborough, of course, and Colonel Buffington, and one or two others.

Nobody that you will care for except the judge and Patty and Billy." "I shan't forget, but I may be a little late getting home.

Good-bye, my dear, until evening." Bending over her chair, he kissed her flushed cheek, while George remarked carelessly: "I'll see you later, father, when I've had a bath and a shave." After the gentle tones of Mr.Fowler, the vitality of George's voice sounded almost brutal, and he added just as carelessly when the front door had shut softly: "The old man looks seedy, doesn't he, mother ?" A worried look brought out three startling lines in Mrs.Fowler's forehead, and Gabriella observed suddenly that there were tiny crow's feet around her blue eyes where the whites were flecked ever so faintly with yellow.