its of the exception had been reached.

He had been new to the young ladies at Posilippo, and there was no
reason why they should say to each other that he was a very different
man from the ingenuous youth who, ten years before, used to wander
with Georgina Gressie down vistas of plank fences brushed over with the
advertisements of quack medicines. It was natural he should be, and we,
who know him, would have found that he had traversed the whole scale of
alteration. There was nothing ingenuous in him now; he had the look of
experience, of having been seasoned and hardened by the years.

His face, his complexion, were the same; still smooth-shaven and slim,
he always passed, at first, for a man scarcely out of his twenties. But
his expression was old, and his talk was older still,--the talk of one
who had seen much of the world (as indeed he had, to-day), and judged
most things for himself, with a humorous scepticism which, whatever
concessions it might make, superficially, for the sake of not offending
(for instance) two remarkably nice American women, of the kind that had
kept most of their illusions, left you with the conviction that the
next minute it would go quickly back to its own standpoint There was a
curious contradiction in him; he struck you as serious, and yet he could
not be said to take things seriously. This was what made Kate Theory
feel so sure that he had lost the object of his affections; and she
said to herself that it must have been under circumstances of peculiar
sadness, for that was, after all, a frequent accident, and was not
usually thought, in itself, a sufficient stroke to make a man a cynic.
This reflection, it may be added, was, on the young lady's part, just
the least bit acrimonious. Captain Benyon was not a cynic in any sense
in which he might have shocked an innocent mind; he kept his cynicism
to himself, and was a very clever, courteous, attentive gentleman. If he
was melancholy, you knew it chiefly by his jokes, for they were usually
at his own expense; and if he was indifferent, it was all the more
to his credit that he should have exerted himself to entertain his
countrywomen.

The last time he called before the arrival of the expected brother, he
found Miss Theory alone, and sitting up, for a wonder, at her window.
Kate had driven into Naples to give orders at the hotel for the
reception of the travellers, who required accommodation more spacious
than the villa at Posilippo (whe