"

Sherringham stared. "Aren't the things good? I had an idea----!"

"Good?" cried Lady Agnes. "They're too odious, too wicked."

"Ah," laughed Peter, "that's what people fall into if they live abroad.
The French oughtn't to live abroad!"

"Here they come," Grace announced at this point; "but they've got a
strange man with them."

"That's a bore when we want to talk!" Lady Agnes sighed.

Peter got up in the spirit of welcome and stood a moment watching the
others approach. "There will be no difficulty in talking, to judge by
the gentleman," he dropped; and while he remains so conspicuous our eyes
may briefly rest on him. He was middling high and was visibly a
representative of the nervous rather than of the phlegmatic branch of
his race. He had an oval face, fine firm features, and a complexion that
tended to the brown. Brown were his eyes, and women thought them soft;
dark brown his hair, in which the same critics sometimes regretted the
absence of a little undulation. It was perhaps to conceal this plainness
that he wore it very short. His teeth were white, his moustache was
pointed, and so was the small beard that adorned the extremity of his
chin. His face expressed intelligence and was very much alive; it had
the further distinction that it often struck superficial observers with
a certain foreignness of cast. The deeper sort, however, usually felt it
latently English enough. There was an idea that, having taken up the
diplomatic career and gone to live in strange lands, he cultivated the
mask of an alien, an Italian or a Spaniard; of an alien in time
even--one of the wonderful ubiquitous diplomatic agents of the sixteenth
century. In fact, none the less, it would have been impossible to be
more modern than Peter Sherringham--more of one's class and one's
country. But this didn't prevent several stray persons--Bridget Dormer
for instance--from admiring the hue of his cheek for its olive richness
and his moustache and beard for their resemblance to those of Charles I.
At the same time--she rather jumbled her comparisons--she thought he
recalled a Titian.

IV

Peter's meeting with Nick was of the friendliest on both sides,
involving a great many "dear fellows" and "old boys," and his salutation
to the younger of the Miss Dormers consisted of the frankest "Delighted
to see you, my dear Bid!" There was no kissing, but there was cousinship
in the air, of a conscious, living kind, as Gabriel Nash doubtle