Yet the face, with its eager and scared expression, had been too quickly seen by her, and too vividly impressed upon her keen perception; and she went on, chilled a little, as if some cloud had come over the clear brightness of the morning.
Phebe was so much at home in the house, that when she found the housemaid on her knees cleaning the hall floor, she passed on unceremoniously to the dining-room, where she felt sure of finding some of the family.

It was a spacious room, with a low ceiling where black beams crossed and recrossed each other; with wainscoted walls, and a carved chimney-piece of almost black oak.

A sombre place in gloomy weather, yet so decorated with old china vases, and great brass salvers, and silver cups and tankards catching every ray of light, that the whole room glistened in this bright May-day.

In the broad cushioned seat formed by the sill of the oriel window, which was almost as large as a room itself, there sat the elder Mrs.Sefton, Roland Sefton's foreign mother, with his two children standing before her.

They had their hands clasped behind them, and their faces were turned toward her with the grave earnestness children's faces often wear.