ering the use of a telescope and accepting that
of a cigar, the other was a personage I had not yet encountered, a small
pale youth in showy knickerbockers, whose eyebrows and nose and the glued
points of whose little moustache were extraordinarily uplifted and
sustained. I remember taking him at first for a foreigner and for
something of a pretender: I scarce know why unless because of the motive
I felt in the stare he fixed on me when I asked Miss Saunt to come away.
He struck me a little as a young man practising the social art of
impertinence; but it didn't matter, for Flora came away with alacrity,
bringing all her prettiness and pleasure and gliding over the grass in
that rustle of delicate mourning which made the endless variety of her
garments, as a painter could take heed, strike one always as the same
obscure elegance. She seated herself on the floor of my mother's chair,
a little too much on her right instep as I afterwards gathered, caressing
her still hand, smiling up into her cold face, commending and approving
her without a reserve and without a doubt. She told her immediately, as
if it were something for her to hold on by, that she was soon to sit to
me for a "likeness," and these words gave me a chance to enquire if it
would be the fate of the picture, should I finish it, to be presented to
the young man in the knickerbockers. Her lips, at this, parted in a
stare; her eyes darkened to the purple of one of the shadow-patches on
the sea. She showed for the passing instant the face of some splendid
tragic mask, and I remembered for the inconsequence of it what Mrs.
Meldrum had said about her sight. I had derived from this lady a
worrying impulse to catechise her, but that didn't seem exactly kind; so
I substituted another question, inquiring who the pretty young man in
knickerbockers might happen to be.

"Oh a gentleman I met at Boulogne. He has come over to see me." After a
moment she added: "Lord Iffield."

I had never heard of Lord Iffield, but her mention of his having been at
Boulogne helped me to give him a niche. Mrs. Meldrum had incidentally
thrown a certain light on the manners of Mrs. Floyd-Taylor, Flora's
recent hostess in that charming town, a lady who, it appeared, had a
special vocation for helping rich young men to find a use for their
leisure. She had always one or other in hand and had apparently on this
occasion pointed her lesson at the rare creature on the opposite coast. I