ld scalp and cleared his throat,
hobbling up to his room and wondering what the devil Maple's was coming
to.

A moment later Jocelyn arrived, very stately in the evening dress of
the seventies. His face looked brown and hard and weathered, like a
filbert, against his white spread of shirt-front. His eyes twinkled,
his temples were flushed, and the twisted cord of an artery could be
seen pulsating across each of them: all three being symptoms of the
bottle of Pommery on which he had dressed. When he saw Gabrielle he
said "Ha--very good, very good," and she, in an access of enthusiasm,
kissed him and smelt his vinous breath.

It was no more than a stone's throw from their hotel to the Shelbourne,
Jocelyn remembering his long-forgotten manners stepped aside
courteously when they crossed the road as if he were escorting a real
lady. Gabrielle couldn't understand this at all; she would have liked
to jog along with him arm in arm. The magnificence of the Shelbourne
with its uniformed porters overpowered Gabrielle, and when she reached
the Halbertons' private room, she, who had often been reproved for
talking the heads off Biddy and Mr. Considine, was dumb. Jocelyn,
however, pouring gin and bitters on his Pommery, did talking enough for
both of them. He was in excellent form. His talk flowed steadily and
Gabrielle, drifting as it were, into an eddy, was left at liberty to
examine her cousins and their company.

Lord Halberton and Jocelyn Hewish had very little in common. The peer
she noticed wore an air of great fragility, as though he had been
sprinkled with powder to preserve him. His movements were all minute
and precise. He walked with short steps; and when he smiled, as
Jocelyn, already in the story-telling stage, compelled him to do, his
lips twitched apart for a moment and then closed again as if he were
afraid that any expression more violent might make his teeth fall out.
Gabrielle decided that he must be very old, so old that he was only
kept alive by these precautions. She had noticed, too, when she shook
hands with him that the flesh of his fingers was limp, and that the
joints were stiff like those of a dead man.

Lady Halberton, who, at the Horse Show had struck her as an ancient and
withered woman, now appeared middle-aged, scintillating in a scheme of
black and silver. Her dress and her toupet were black, relieved by
silver sequins and a silver mounted tiara. High lights in keeping with
the s