His skin was bronzed and reddened by sun
and wind. The fine hard mouth under the little dark moustache was not
so hard that it could not, sometimes, be tender. His irreproachable
nose escaped the too high curve that would have made it arrogant. And
his eyes, keen and hard in movement, by simply keeping quiet under
lowered brows, became charged with a curious and engaging pathos.
Their pathos had appealed to the little red-haired, pink-skinned,
green-eyed nurse who had worked under him in Leeds. She was clever and
kind--much too kind, it was supposed--to Rowcliffe. There had been one
or two others before the little red-haired nurse, so that, though he
was growing hard, he had not grown bitter.
He was not in the least afraid of growing bitter; for he knew that his
eyes, as long as he could keep them quiet, would preserve him from all
necessity for bitterness.
Rowcliffe had always trusted a great deal to his eyes. Because of them
he had left several young ladies, his patients, quite heart-broken in
Leeds. The young ladies knew nothing about the little red-haired nurse
and had never ceased to wonder why Dr. Rowcliffe did not want to marry
them.
And Steven Rowcliffe's eyes, so disastrous to the young ladies in
Leeds, saw nobody in Morfe whom he could possibly want to marry. The
village of Morfe is built in a square round its green. The doctor's
house stands on a plot of rising ground on the north side of the
square, and from its front windows young Rowcliffe could see the
inhabitants of Morfe coming and going before him as on a stage, and he
kept count of them all.
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