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The stranger’s face had not yet been fully turned in her direction, but the sound of his voice was slightly familiar. That voice, had he known it, was his strong point. Not too deep, though round and mellow; in no wise weak, though it could be gentle as a woman’s; firm and penetrating, without a shade of hardness. And above all it was a voice that rang true. When at last he sat down and Marion saw him distinctly, the familiarity of the voice was explained. It was the hero of the umbrella! As he glanced round the table she half fancied that his eye for a second rested upon her, with the slightest possible expression of recognition. But very probably this was only a trick of her imagination. She was glad when he entered into an evidently interesting conversation with Mr. Price and his pupil; as he then turned slightly aside and she ventured now and again to glance at him. No, Cissy was right; he was most certainly not handsome. And yet not exactly plain-looking either. A certain quiet, self-contained gravity of expression attracted her. She knew him to be an unusually clever man, but had she not known this from hearsay, she fancied she would have discovered it for herself. The brow was good, the eyes too deeply set for beauty, the nose passable, the mouth well-shaped, but with lines about it that would have made it hard, had it not been for a gentler expression, half of humour, half of melancholy, which went and came, now brightening, now saddening, but always softening all the features of the dark, quiet face. Knowing, as she aid, nothing of his history and character, it seemed to Marion that it would not be difficult to understand this man; if not to like him, at least to respect and be interested by him. I think it was what she had heard of his somewhat isolated and solitary life, that inclined her to feel already a sort of regard, pity almost, for him. Her life had not been so bright and full, but that she had some knowledge of lonely hours and lonelier feelings. How easily she could picture him to herself as a boy, shy and backward beside his more brilliant brother. How well she could enter into the little understood suffering carelessly alluded to in those few words of his mother’s when expressing her wish that Sir John had left an heir, “and so does Ralph himself wish, for that matter.”