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marriage, two had died; his profound grief at their loss, and the
inclination for domestic life which always appeared in the man, made it
matter for surprise that he had waited so long before taking another
wife. It would not have occurred to most of those who knew him that his
extreme devotion to women made him shy, diffident, all but timorous in
their presence. But Piers Otway, for all his mental disturbance at this
moment, remarked the singular deference, the tone and look of admiring
gentleness, with which Mr. Jacks turned to his wife as he presented
their guest.

Mrs. Jacks was well fitted to inspire homage. Her age appeared to be
less than five-and-twenty; she was of that tall and gracefully
commanding height which became the English ideal in the last quarter of
the century--her portrait appears on every page illustrated by Du
Manner. She had a brilliant complexion, a perfect profile; her smile,
though perhaps a little mechanical, was the last expression of
immutable sweetness, of impeccable self-control; her voice never
slipped from the just note of unexaggerated suavity. Consummate as an
ornament of the drawing-room, she would be no less admirably at ease on
the tennis lawn, in the boat, on horseback, or walking by the seashore.
Beyond criticism her breeding; excellent her education. There appeared,
too, in her ordinary speech, her common look, a real amiability of
disposition; one could not imagine her behaving harshly or with
conscious injustice. Her manners--within the recognised limits--were
frank, spontaneous; she had for the most part a liberal tone in
conversation, and was evidently quite incapable of bitter feeling on
any everyday subject. Piers Otway bent before her with unfeigned
reverence; she dazzled him, she delighted and confused his senses. As
often as he dared look at her, his eye discovered some new elegance in
her attitude, some marvel of delicate beauty in the details of her
person. A spectator might have observed that this worship was manifest
to Mr. Jacks, and that it by no means displeased him.

"You are very like your father, Mr. Otway," was the host's first remark
after a moment of ceremony. "Very like what he was forty years ago." He
laughed, not quite naturally, glancing at his wife. "At that time he
and I were much together. But he went to London; I stayed in the North;
and so we lost sight of each other for many a long year. Somewhere
about 1870 we met by chance, on a Channel stea