CHAPTER XXI.
The door-bell rang. Biddy, occupied with her pleasing duties as hostess,
and flushed with drinking crusty old Port and "Lafitte 1844," did not
hear. Some sudden impulse or vague prescience moved Marcia to open the
door herself. It was Greenleaf. Notwithstanding the untoward state of
affairs, she could not deny herself the pleasure of meeting him, and
ushered him into the parlor, then fortunately vacant.
A cooler observer would have noticed something peculiar in his carriage
as he crossed the hall,--an unnatural pallor, a sharpness in the angles
of his mouth, a quicker respiration, and a look of mingled firmness and
sorrow in his eyes. A stranger might have thought him in a state of
chronic nervous irritability or mild insanity. And truly, a sensitive
man, perplexed between conflicting duties, spurred by conscience, yet
wanting in courage to do its bidding, presents a pitiable spectacle; it
is a position of sharp suspense which no mind can hold long;--relief
must come, in heartbreak or darkness, if in no other way.
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