king only once. He had apparently made up his mind about her before he
saw her. But he looked again, evidently finding her at variance with a
preconceived idea, and this time she flushed a little under his stare,
and she got the impression that Mr. Pembroke was a man from whom few
secrets of a certain kind were hid. She felt that he had seized, at a
second glance, a situation that she had succeeded in hiding from the
women. He was surprised, but cynically so. He was the sort of person who
had probably possessed at Harvard the knowledge of the world of a Tammany
politician; he had long ago written his book--such as it was--and closed
it: or, rather, he had worked out his system at a precocious age, and it
had lasted him ever since. He had decided that undergraduate life, freed
from undergraduate restrictions, was a good thing. And he did not, even
in these days, object to breaking something valuable occasionally.

His physical attributes are more difficult to describe, so closely were
they allied to those which, for want of a better word, must be called
mental. He was neither tall nor short, he was well fed, but hard, his
shoulders too broad, his head a little large. If he should have happened
to bump against one, the result would have been a bruise--not for him.
His eyes were blue, his light hair short, and there was a slight baldness
beginning; his face was red-tanned. There was not the slightest doubt
that he could be effectively rude, and often was; but it was evident, for
some reason, that he meant to be gracious (for Mr. Pembroke) to Honora.
Perhaps this was the result of the second glance. One of his name had not
lacked, indeed, for instructions in gentility. It must not be thought
that she was in a condition to care much about what Mr. Pembroke thought
or did, and yet she felt instinctively that he had changed his greeting
between that first and second glance.

"I hope you'll forgive my coming in this way," he said. "I'm an old
friend of Hugh's."

"I'm very glad to have Hugh's friends," she answered.

He looked at her again.

"Is tea ready?" inquired Mrs. Kame. "I'm famished." And, as they walked
through the house to the garden, where the table was set beside the stone
seat: "I don't see how you ever can leave this place, Honora. I've always
wanted to come here, but it's even more beautiful than I thought."

"It's very beautiful," said Honora.

"I'll have a whiskey and soda, if I may," announced Mrs. Rindge