hat he was
in an abnormally sensitive condition of mind, where mere negative
unresponsiveness could hurt him like a slight or a rebuff?

In the course of the week I ran over to Pau, to pass a day with the
Winchfields, who had a villa there. When I came back I brought with me
all that they (who knew everybody) could tell about Sir Richard
Maistre. He was intelligent and amiable, but the shyest of shy men. He
avoided general society, frightened away perhaps by the British Mamma,
and spent a good part of each year abroad, wandering rather listlessly
from town to town. Though young and rich, he was neither fast nor
ambitious: the Members' entrance to the House of Commons, the
stage-doors of the music halls, were equally without glamour for him;
and if he was a Justice of the Peace and a Deputy Lieutenant, he had
become so through the tacit operation of his stake in the country. He
had chambers in St. James's Street, was a member of the Travellers
Club, and played the violin--for an amateur rather well. His brother,
Mortimer Maistre, was in diplomacy--at Rio Janeiro or somewhere. His
sister had married an Australian, and lived in Melbourne.

At the Hotel d'Angleterre I found his shyness was mistaken for
indifference. He was civil to everybody, but intimate with none. He
attached himself to no party, paired off with no individuals. He
sought nobody. On the other hand, the persons who went out of their
way to seek him, came back, as they felt, repulsed. He had been
polite, but languid. These, however, were not the sort of persons he
would be likely to care for. There prevailed a general conception of
him as cold, unsociable. He certainly walked about a good deal
alone--you met him on the sands, on the cliffs, in the stiff little
streets, rambling aimlessly, seldom with a companion. But to me it was
patent that he played the solitary from necessity, not from
choice--from the necessity of his temperament. A companion was
precisely that which above all things his heart coveted; only he
didn't know how to set about annexing one. If he sought nobody, it was
because he didn't know how. This was a part of what his eyes said;
they bespoke his desire, his perplexity, his lack of nerve. Of the
people who put themselves out to seek him, there was Miss Hicks; there
were a family from Leeds, named Bunn, a father, mother, son, and two
redoubtable daughters, who drank champagne with every meal, dressed in
the height of fashion, said their