h Miltoun. Really
this was serious! And the beggars knew it, and they were going to work
it. And Miltoun had gone up to Town, no one knew what for. It was the
devil of a mess!

In all the conversation of this young man there was that peculiar brand
of voice, which seems ever rebutting an accusation of being serious--a
brand of voice and manner warranted against anything save ridicule; and
in the face of ridicule apt to disappear. The words, just a little
satirically spoken: "What is, my dear young man?" stopped him at once.

Looking for the complement and counterpart of Lady Casterley, one would
perhaps have singled out her brother. All her abrupt decision was
negated in his profound, ironical urbanity. His voice and look and
manner were like his velvet coat, which had here and there a whitish
sheen, as if it had been touched by moonlight. His hair too had that
sheen. His very delicate features were framed in a white beard and
moustache of Elizabethan shape. His eyes, hazel and still clear, looked
out very straight, with a certain dry kindliness. His face, though
unweathered and unseamed, and much too fine and thin in texture, had a
curious affinity to the faces of old sailors or fishermen who have lived
a simple, practical life in the light of an overmastering tradition. It
was the face of a man with a very set creed, and inclined to be satiric
towards innovations, examined by him and rejected full fifty years ago.
One felt that a brain not devoid either of subtlety or aesthetic quality
had long given up all attempts to interfere with conduct; that all
shrewdness of speculation had given place to shrewdness of practical
judgment based on very definite experience. Owing to lack of advertising
power, natural to one so conscious of his dignity as to have lost all
care for it, and to his devotion to a certain lady, only closed by death,
his life had been lived, as it were, in shadow. Still, he possessed a
peculiar influence in Society, because it was known to be impossible to
get him to look at things in a complicated way. He was regarded rather
as a last resort, however. "Bad as that? Well, there's old Fitz-Harold!
Try him! He won't advise you, but he'll say something."

And in the heart of that irreverent young man, Harbinger, there stirred a
sort of misgiving. Had he expressed himself too freely? Had he said
anything too thick? He had forgotten the old boy! Stirring Bertie up
with his foot, he mu