study his _menu_, and enjoy the _entrees_
in silence, undisturbed by the uncertain pleasures of conversation.

Robert, meanwhile, during the first few minutes, in which Mr. Wynnstay
had been engaged in some family talk with Mrs. Darcy, had been allowing
himself a little deliberate study of Mr. Wendover across what seemed
the safe distance of a long table. The Squire was talking shortly and
abruptly yet with occasional flashes of shrill, ungainly laughter, to
Lady Charlotte, who seemed to have no sort of fear of him and to
find him good company, and every now and then Robert saw him turn to
Catherine on the other side of him and with an obvious change of manner
address some formal and constrained remark to her.

Mr. Wendover was a man of middle height and loose, bony frame, of which,
as Robert had noticed in the drawing-room, all the lower half had a thin
and shrunken look. But the shoulders, which had the scholar's stoop,
and the head were massive and squarely outlined. The head was specially
remarkable for its great breadth and comparative flatness above the
eyes, and for the way in which the head itself dwarfed the face, which,
as contrasted with the large angularity of the skull, had a pinched
and drawn look. The hair was reddish-gray, the eyes small, but deep-set
under fine brows, and the thin-lipped wrinkled mouth and long chin had a
look of hard, sarcastic strength.

Generally the countenance was that of an old man, the furrows were deep,
the skin brown and shrivelled. But the alertness and force of the man's
whole expression showed that, if the body was beginning to fail, the
mind was as fresh and masterful as ever. His hair, worn rather longer
than usual, his loosely-fitting dress and slouching carriage gave him
an un-English look. In general he impressed Robert as a sort of curious
combination of the foreign _savant_ with the English grandee, for while
his manner showed a considerable consciousness of birth and social
importance, the gulf between him and the ordinary English country
gentleman could hardly have been greater, whether in points of
appearance or, as Robert very well knew, in points of social conduct.
And as Robert watched him, his thoughts flew back again to the library,
to this man's past, to all that those eyes had seen and those hands
had touched. He felt already a mysterious, almost a yearning, sense
of acquaintance with the being who had just received him with such
chilling, such unexpected