The magnificent turn of
its short upper lip, and the soft voluptuous line of its under lip;
its sportive dimples and ripe red colour; its even rows of dazzling,
pearly teeth were adorable; but they appealed to the senses, and in no
sense or shape to the soul. Her brows, slightly irregular in outline,
met over the nose; her eyelashes were of great length, and her
eyes--slightly, ever so slightly, obliquely set, and larger than those
of living human beings--were black, black as her hair; and the pupils
sparkled and shone with the most damnable expression of satanical
hatred and glee. The whole thing, the face and the light that emanated
from it, was so entirely awful and devilish, that Captain Smythe sat
like one turned to stone, and it was not until long after it had
vanished that he groped his way to the door, and in Adam's costume,
for he dared not stay to put on his clothes, fled down the passage to
his bedroom.
From his wife he got little sympathy; her sarcasm was too deep for
words, and she merely ordered her husband on no account to breathe a
word of his "silliness" before either the children or the servants.
The injunction, however, which was naturally carried out to the
letter, was futile as a precaution, for, on running into the bathroom
one morning when every one else was downstairs, the eldest boy,
Ronald, saw, floating in the bath, the body of a hoary-headed old man.
It was bloated and purplish blue, and had big, glassy eyes that stared
at him in such a hideous, meaningless manner that he uttered a scream
of terror and fled.
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