d polished friend knew an
unprecedented flutter as he was ushered, at the Royal Hotel, into Miss
Cookham's sitting-room. Yes, it was an adventure, and he had never had
an adventure in his life; the term, for him, was essentially a term
of high appreciation--such as disqualified for that figure, under due
criticism, every single passage of his past career.

What struck him at the moment as qualifying in the highest degree this
actual passage was the fact that at no great distance from his hostess
in the luxurious room, as he apprehended it, in which the close of day
had begun to hang a few shadows, sat a gentleman who rose as she rose,
and whose name she at once mentioned to him. He had for Herbert Dodd all
the air of a swell, the gentleman--rather red-faced and bald-headed, but
moustachioed, waistcoated, necktied to the highest pitch, with an effect
of chains and rings, of shining teeth in a glassily monocular smile; a
wondrous apparition to have been asked to "meet" him, as in contemporary
fiction, or for him to have been asked to meet. "Captain Roper, Mr.
Herbert Dodd"--their entertainer introduced them, yes; but with a sequel
immediately afterward more disconcerting apparently to Captain Roper
himself even than to her second and more breathless visitor; a "Well
then, good-bye till the next time," with a hand thrust straight out,
which allowed the personage so addressed no alternative but to lay aside
his teacup, even though Herbert saw there was a good deal left in it,
and glare about him for his hat. Miss Cookham had had her tea-tray on a
small table before her, she had served Captain Roper while waiting
for Mr. Dodd; but she simply dismissed him now, with a high sweet
unmistakable decision, a knowledge of what she was about, as our hero
would have called it, which enlarged at a stroke the latter's view of
the number of different things and sorts of things, in the sphere of the
manners and ways of those living at their ease, that a social relation
would put before one. Captain Roper would have liked to remain, would
have liked more tea, but Kate signified in this direct fashion that
she had had enough of him. Herbert had seen things, in his walk of
life--rough things, plenty; but never things smoothed with that especial
smoothness, carried out as it were by the fine form of Captain Roper's
own retreat, which included even a bright convulsed leave-taking
cognisance of the plain, vague individual, of no lustre at all a