"Who knocks so late?" asked a shrill voice. "A proper hour and a pleasant to disturb folk. Marry, Deil stick the visitor," she added, withdrawing the ponderous bolts, and opening the door.
"As of old, good Beatrix, you are still without fear," said Clermistonlee.
"Why? because I am without hope," she rejoined in a fierce tone. "Fear! what should I fear? Did I not know it was thee? But what fool's errand or knavish purpose brings thee here now?"
There was a momentary pause, and a terrible glance--one at least of intense expression passed between these two. A sentence will explain it.
When Clermistonlee was but a youth, Beatrix though ten years his senior, was among the first of his loves, and by her own futile endeavours to ensnare the heir of a powerful Baron, became one of the first victims of his gallantry; she was then a beautiful and artful woman; but gradually her beauty faded, her arts failed, and her spirits sank: abandoned by her friends, and despised by her betrayer, she had long, long since lost sight of every hope of marriage, or of regaining an honourable position in life, and now she had sunk so low as to be a mere abject dependant, a vile panderer to the amours of her early lover--an entrapper of others; and when the old mansion was abandoned to the crows and spiders, she had remained there, a half-forgotten pensioner on his bounty--a creature only to be remembered when her vile services were required. Now she was old, wrinkled, and hideous; but Clermistonlee in his fortieth year seemed as gay and as young, as in the days when first he pressed her to his bosom. Beatrix was now fifty!
These ten years made a world of difference between them.
He felt all her eagle glance conveyed, but uttering a very cavalier-like malediction, strode along the passage or ambulatory with his bright spurs clanking, and his white plumes waving as gallantly as they had done twenty years before. How different was the aspect of Beatrix! Crime, mental misery, and a life of disease and dissipation made her seem many years older than she was. She stooped much at times, and was poorly clad in garments that like herself had seen better days. Her head was covered by a dirty long-eared linen cap, beneath which a few grizzled hairs escaped to wander over a face that, like her hands and neck, had by the use of lotions and essences become a mass of saffron wrinkles. Her eyes were grey, hollow, keen, and unpleasant in expression; her lips thin and colourless, and grey hairs were appearing on her chin.