"Harder intellects than mine might have attributed the extraordinary impression produced on me to the disordered condition of my mind at that time; to the weariness of my own base pleasures which had been gaining on me for months past, to the undefined longing which that weariness implied for newer interests and fresher hopes than any that had possessed me yet. I attempted no such sober self-examination as this: I believed in destiny then, I believe in destiny now. It was enough for me to know--as I did know--that the first sense I had ever felt of something better in my nature than my animal self was roused by that girl's face looking at me from her picture as no woman's face had ever looked at me yet. In those tender eyes--in the chance of making that gentle creature my wife--I saw my destiny written. The portrait which had come into my hands so strangely and so unexpectedly was the silent messenger of happiness close at hand, sent to warn, to encourage, to rouse me before it was too late. I put the miniature under my pillow at night; I looked at it again the next morning. My conviction of the day before remained as strong as ever; my superstition (if you please to call it so) pointed out to me irresistibly the way on which I should go. There was a ship in port which was to sail for England in a fortnight, touching at Madeira. In that ship I took my passage."
Thus far the reader had advanced with no interruption to disturb him. But at the last words the tones of another voice, low and broken, mingled with his own.
"Was she a fair woman," asked the voice, "or dark, like me?"
Mr. Neal paused, and looked up. The doctor was still at the bed head, with his fingers mechanically on the patient's pulse. The child, missing his midday sleep, was beginning to play languidly with his new toy. The father's eyes were watching him with a rapt and ceaseless attention. But one great change was visible in the listeners since the narrative had begun. Mrs. Armadale had dropped her hold of her husband's hand, and sat with her face steadily turned away from him The hot African blood burned red in her dusky cheeks as she obstinately repeated the question: "Was she a fair woman, or dark, like me?"
"Fair," said her husband, without looking at her.
Her hands, lying clasped together in her lap, wrung each other hard--she said no more. Mr. Neal's overhanging eyebrows lowered ominously as he returned to the narrative. He had incurred his own severe displeasure--he had caught himself in the act of secretly pitying her.