And now! I _feel_--more than see--that he is drawing nigh me.
Through my eyelids--for I am very sure that I never lift my eyes--I get an idea of his appearance.
Under his present aspect I am much more disposed to be critical, and to pick holes in him, than I was under his former one.

Any attempt at youthfulness, any effort at _smartness_, will not escape my vigilant reprobation--down-eyed and red-cheeked as I appear to be.

But none such do I find.

There is no false juvenility--there is no trace of dandyism in the plain and quiet clothes, in the hair sparsely sprinkled with snow, in the mature and goodly face.
An iron-gray, middle-aged gentleman stands before me, more vigorous, more full of healthy life than two-thirds of the puny youth, nourished on sherry and bitters, of the present small generation, but with no wish, no smallest effort to take away one from the burden of years that God has laid on his strong shoulders.
There is no doubt that I shall not speak first, so for a moment there is a profound silence.

Then I find my hot hand in Sir Roger's where it has so often and so familiarly lain before, and I hear Sir Roger's voice addressing me.
"I am an old fool, Nancy, and you have come to tell me so ?" Somehow I know that the bronze of his face is a little paled by emotion, but there is no sawny sentiment in his tone, none of the lover's whine.
It is the same voice--as manly, as sustained--that made comments on Bobby's little bear.