closer
and more detailed inspection Hamil understood how much his alert,
well-made figure had to do with the first impression of youth. Yet his
expression had nothing in it of that shadow which falls with
years--nothing to show to the world that he had once taken the world by
the throat and wrung a fortune out of it--nothing of the hard gravity or
the underlying sadness of almost ruthless success, and the
responsibility for it.

Yet, from the first, Hamil had been aware of all that was behind this
unstudied frankness, this friendly vigour. There was a man, there--every
inch a man, but exactly of what sort the younger man had not yet
decided.

* * * * *

A faded and very stout lady, gowned with elaborate simplicity, yet
somehow suggesting well-bred untidiness, rolled toward them, propelled
in a wheeled-chair by a black servant.

"Dear," said Mr. Cardross, "this is Mr. Hamil." And Mrs. Cardross
offered him her chubby hand and said a little more than he expected.
Then, to her husband, languidly:

"They're playing tennis, Neville. If Mr. Hamil would care to play there
are tennis-shoes belonging to Gray and Acton."

"Thank you, Mrs. Cardross," said Hamil, "but, as a matter of fact, I am
not yet acclimated."

"You feel a little sleepy?" drawled Mrs. Cardross, maternally
solicitous; "everybody does for the first few days." And to her husband:
"Jessie and Cecile are playing; Shiela must be somewhere about--You will
lunch with us, Mr. Hamil? There's to be a tennis luncheon under the
oaks--we'd really like to have you if you can stay."

Hamil accepted as simply as the invitation was given; Mrs. Cardross
exchanged a few words with her husband in that perfectly natural drawl
which at first might have been mistaken for languid affectation; then
she smiled at Hamil and turned around in her basket chair, parasol
tilted, and the black boy began slowly pedalling her away across the
lawn.

"We'll step over to the tennis-courts," said Cardross, replacing the
straw hat which he had removed to salute his wife; "they're having a
sort of scratch-tournament I believe--my daughters and some other young
people. I think you'll find the courts rather pretty."

The grounds were certainly quaint; spaces for four white marl courts had
been cleared, hewn out of the solid jungle which walled them in with a
noble living growth of live oak, cedar, magnolia, and palmetto. And on
these courts a very gay company