Part 6 (2/2)
”My name is Harford--Philippa Harford.”
The other nodded. It was evidently the answer she had expected.
”For a moment I took you for--some one I used to know many years ago.
Of course it is quite impossible that it should be her, but coming upon you suddenly like this surprised me out of my senses.”
She was a tall, angular woman of what is sometimes called uncertain age, that is to say, she might have been anything from thirty to five-and-forty. She was dressed in a simple gown of brown holland, and it was singularly unbecoming to one of her complexion, for her hair was a faded, nondescript colour which might possibly have been red in early youth, and her skin was sallow and colourless.
Her face could not, even by the most charitable, have been called anything but plain--the cheekbones were high, the features rugged, the eyes small and light; but Philippa noted something very attractive in the expression. There was cleverness in the broad low brow under the wide-brimmed hat so deplorably innocent of all suggestion of prevailing fas.h.i.+on, and a whimsical twist about the corners of the mouth which showed its possessor to be rich in humour. And yet it was a sad face--in some indefinite way it suggested patience and expectancy.
Just now the eyes were wistful, questioning.
”It must have been a relation of yours, I think,” she was saying, ”because her name was Philippa Harford too.” It was an a.s.sertion, but Philippa answered the eyes rather than the words.
”She was my aunt.”
”How the years go by, don't they?” The stranger seemed to be trying to lead the conversation away from the personal. ”And one really doesn't notice their pa.s.sing. One lies on the shelf and gets dusty as the world goes on. Are you going this way? May I walk with you? This is an unconventional meeting. Will you count it sufficient introduction that I knew your aunt many years ago? My name is Isabella Vernon, but that probably conveys nothing to you.”
”By all means let us walk together,” answered Philippa readily. ”I had been watching the sunset, and the moor seemed so solitary.”
”It is. That is why I love it. Dear Bessmoor. Ever changing, yet ever the same--suiting all moods--sympathetic--enveloping. I have a cottage in the heart of her, where I live the simple life, which I like, but which for most people is a synonym for few baths and many discomforts. Do you live near here?”
”No, I am only staying here.”
”But you know this part of the country.”
”No,” replied Philippa again. ”It is all new to me. I only arrived yesterday.”
And in her heart she was thinking, ”Here is some one who could probably tell me many things I want to know,” and yet how impossible to speak of such matters to a stranger.
Isabella Vernon seemed anxious to make friends.
”If you do not know the neighbourhood, I will explain the geography,”
she said pleasantly. ”This is an excellent point of view. See, over there,”--she indicated the direction with her hand as she spoke,--”on the other side of the moor lies the village of Denwick. It has a very fine church--you can just see the tower--and it used to be a place of some importance in the dim ages. There are villages dotted all over this part of the country, right down to the sea.
”'Renwick and Deanwick, Bessmoor and Ling, Northam and Southam lie all in a ring,'
as the country-people say about here. Eastminster is over there----”
again she pointed. ”On fine days you can see the spire of the cathedral, but not from here--from a point about two miles further across Bessmoor. If you are staying some time you ought to explore.”
Again her eyes questioned, and Philippa answered--
”I do not know yet how long I shall stay.”
”You will find many beautiful spots about here which will well repay a visit. Now, you can see Bessacre lying in the little hollow below us.
The woods over there belong to--Major Heathcote----” She paused tentatively.
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