were weary? Was it any wonder if the weariness set its
mark upon their beauty?

The door opened, and the last guest appeared--a man, tall,
broad-chested, and fair, with short yellow hair parted in the middle, a
well-shaped head, a blunt, straight nose, a well-defined but not
obstinate chin, a sensitive mouth, and big, sincere, even enthusiastic,
blue eyes, surmounted by thick blond eyebrows that always looked as if
they had just been brushed vigorously upwards. A small, close-growing
moustache covered his upper lip. His cheeks and forehead were tanned by
the sun. He was thirty-six years old, but looked a great deal younger,
because he was fair. His figure was very muscular and upright, with a
hollow back and lean flanks. His capable, rather large-fingered, but not
clumsy, hands were brown. There was in his face a peculiarly straight
and bright look that suggested the North and Northern things, the
glitter of stars upon snows, cool summits of mountains swept by pure
winds, the scented freshness of pine forests. He had something of the
expression, of the build, and of the carriage of a hero from the North.
But he was surely a hero from the North who had very recently had his
dwelling in the South, and who had taken kindly to it.

When Lady Somerson saw the newcomer, she rushed at him and blew him up.
Then she introduced him to the lady he was to take in to dinner, and,
with an alacrity that was almost feverish, gave the signal for her
guests to move into the dining-room, disclosed at this moment by two
assiduous footmen who briskly pushed back the sliding doors that divided
it from the room in which she had received.

"Our hostess does not conceal her feelings," murmured Mrs. Derringham,
who was Doctor Isaacson's companion, as they found their places at the
long table. "Who is the man whom she has just scolded so vivaciously? I
know his face quite well."

"One of the best fellows in the world--Nigel Armine. I have not seen him
till to-night since last October. He has been out in Egypt."

At this moment he caught the fair man's eyes, and they exchanged with
his a look of friendship.

"Of course! I remember! He looks like a knight-errant. So did his
father, poor Harwich. I used to act with Harwich in the early
never-mind-whats at Burnham House. One scarcely ever sees Nigel now. I
don't think he was ever at all really fond of London and gaieties.
Harwich was, of course. Yet even in his face there was a sort of
strange