He was a tall powerfully-made young man, giving the impression
of strength more than elegance. His face was rather square,
ruddy-coloured (as his father had said), hair and eyes brown--the
latter rather deep-set beneath his thick eyebrows; and he had a trick
of wrinkling up his eyelids when he wanted particularly to observe
anything, which made his eyes look even smaller still at such times.
He had a large mouth, with excessively mobile lips; and another trick
of his was, that when he was amused at anything, he resisted the
impulse to laugh, by a droll manner of twitching and puckering up
his mouth, till at length the sense of humour had its way, and
his features relaxed, and he broke into a broad sunny smile; his
beautiful teeth--his only beautiful feature--breaking out with a
white gleam upon the red-brown countenance. These two tricks of
his--of crumpling up the eyelids, so as to concentrate the power
of sight, which made him look stern and thoughtful; and the odd
twitching of the lips that was preliminary to a smile, which made
him look intensely merry--gave the varying expressions of his face
a greater range "from grave to gay, from lively to severe," than is
common with most men. To Molly, who was not finely discriminative
in her glances at the stranger this first night, he simply appeared
"heavy-looking, clumsy," and "a person she was sure she should never
get on with." He certainly did not seem to care much what impression
he made upon his mother's visitor. He was at that age when young men
admire a formed beauty more than a face with any amount of future
capability of loveliness, and when they are morbidly conscious of the
difficulty of finding subjects of conversation in talking to girls
in a state of feminine hobbledehoyhood. Besides, his thoughts were
full of other subjects, which he did not intend to allow to ooze out
in words, yet he wanted to prevent any of that heavy silence which
he feared might be impending--with an angry and displeased father,
and a timorous and distressed mother. He only looked upon Molly as
a badly-dressed, and rather awkward girl, with black hair and an
intelligent face, who might help him in the task he had set himself
of keeping up a bright general conversation during the rest of the
evening; might help him--if she would, but she would not. She thought
him unfeeling in his talkativeness; his constant flow of words upon
indifferent subjects was a wonder and a repulsion to her. How could
he go on so cheerfully while his mother sat there, scarcely eating
anything, and doing her best, with ill-success, to swallow down the
tears that would keep rising to her eyes; when his father's heavy
brow was deeply clouded, and he evidently cared nothing--at first at
least--for all the chatter his son poured forth? Had Mr. Roger Hamley
no sympathy in him? She would show that she had some, at any rate. So
she quite declined the part, which he had hoped she would have taken,
of respondent, and possible questioner; and his work became more
and more like that of a man walking in a quagmire. Once the Squire
roused himself to speak to the butler; he felt the need of outward
stimulus--of a better vintage than usual.