ng about her kinsman was one of admiration for the perfect ease and
almost instinctive at-homeness with which he took his place. He had come
to his own and his own had received him; that was the situation, a very
pleasant one, which he accepted with the smiling trust that was at once
the most perfect and polite of acknowledgments.

"So you do not enjoy traveling?" said Judge Rawdon as if continuing a
conversation.

"I think it the most painful way of taking pleasure, sir--that is the
actual transit. And sleeping cars and electric-lighted steamers and
hotels do not mitigate the suffering. If Dante was writing now he might
depict a constant round of personally conducted tours in Purgatory.
I should think the punishment adequate for any offense. But I like
arriving at places. New York has given me a lot of new sensations
to-day, and I have forgotten the transit troubles already."

He talked well and temperately, and yet Ethel could not avoid the
conclusion that he was a man of positive character and uncompromising
prejudices. And she also felt a little disappointed in his personality,
which contradicted her ideal of a Yorkshire squire. For he was small and
slender in stature, and his face was keen and thin, from the high
cheek bones to the sharp point of the clean-shaven chin. Yet it was
an interesting face, for the brows were broad and the eyes bright
and glancing. That his nature held the opposite of his qualities was
evident from the mouth, which was composed and discreet and generally
clothed with a frank smile, negatived by the deep, sonorous voice which
belongs to the indiscreet and quarrelsome. His dress was perfect. Ethel
could find no fault in it, except the monocle which he did not use once
during the evening, and which she therefore decided was a quite idle and
unhandsome adjunct.

One feature of his character was definite--he was a home-loving man.
He liked the society of women with whom he could be familiar, and
he preferred the company of books and music to fashionable social
functions. This pleasant habit of domesticity was illustrated during
the evening by an accidental incident--a noisy, mechanical street
organ stopped before the windows, and in a blatant manner began its
performance. Conversation was paralyzed by the intrusion and when it
was removed Judge Rawdon said: "What a democratic, leveling, aggressive
thing music is! It insists on being heard. It is always in the way,
it thrusts itself upon yo