e along," she said to Honora, as she gave her hand-bag to a
footman. "I hope you don't mind. Abby and I were shopping and we ran
into Hugh and Georgie yesterday at Sherry's, and we've been together
ever since. Not quite that--but almost. Hugh begged us to come up, and
there didn't seem to be any reason why we shouldn't, so we telephoned
down to Banbury for our trunks and maids, and we've played bridge all
the way. By the way, Georgie, where's my pocket-book?"

Mr. Pembroke handed it over, and was introduced by Hugh. He looked at
Honora, and his glance somehow betokened that he was in the habit of
looking only once. He had apparently made up his mind about her before
he saw her. But he looked again, evidently finding her at variance with
a preconceived idea, and this time she flushed a little under his stare,
and she got the impression that Mr. Pembroke was a man from whom few
secrets of a certain kind were hid. She felt that he had seized, at a
second glance, a situation that she had succeeded in hiding from the
women. He was surprised, but cynically so. He was the sort of person
who had probably possessed at Harvard the knowledge of the world of
a Tammany politician; he had long ago written his book--such as it
was--and closed it: or, rather, he had worked out his system at a
precocious age, and it had lasted him ever since. He had decided that
undergraduate life, freed from undergraduate restrictions, was a good
thing. And he did not, even in these days, object to breaking something
valuable occasionally.

His physical attributes are more difficult to describe, so closely were
they allied to those which, for want of a better word, must be called
mental. He was neither tall nor short, he was well fed, but hard, his
shoulders too broad, his head a little large. If he should have happened
to bump against one, the result would have been a bruise--not for
him. His eyes were blue, his light hair short, and there was a slight
baldness beginning; his face was red-tanned. There was not the slightest
doubt that he could be effectively rude, and often was; but it was
evident, for some reason, that he meant to be gracious (for Mr.
Pembroke) to Honora. Perhaps this was the result of the second glance.
One of his name had not lacked, indeed, for instructions in gentility.
It must not be thought that she was in a condition to care much about
what Mr. Pembroke thought or did, and yet she felt instinctively that he
had changed his gr