ring fires and cosy armchairs, instead of
the stiff-backed, beautifully carved Louis XIV. furniture that stood,
each chair and table rigidly in its appointed place, as though bidding
defiance to any one bold enough to attempt alterations.

The golden light in the sky shone faintly in at the open window, as
though longing to enter, but the dazzling brilliance of the room seemed
to fling it back into the blue dome of sea and sky outside.

Robin was standing by a large looking-glass in the corner of the room
trying to improve the shape of his tie; and it was characteristic of
him that, although he had not seen his father for eighteen years, he
was thinking a great deal more about his tie than about the approaching
meeting.

He was, at this time, twenty years of age. Tall and dark, he had all
the Trojan characteristics; small, delicately shaped ears; a mouth that
gave signs of all the Trojan obstinacy, called by the Trojans
themselves family pride; a high, well-shaped forehead with hair closely
cut and of a dark brown. He was considered by most people
handsome--but to some his eyes, of the real Trojan blue, were too cold
and impassive. He gave you the impression of some one who watched,
rather disdainfully, the ill-considered and impulsive actions of his
fellow-men.

He was, however, exactly suited to his surroundings. He maintained the
same position as the room with regard to the world in general--"We are
Trojans; we are very old and very expensive and very, very good, and it
behoves you to recognise this fact and give way with fitting deference."

He had not seen his father for eighteen years, and, as he had been
separated from him at the unimpressionable age of two, he may be said
never to have seen him at all. He had no recollection of him, and the
picture that he had painted was constructed out of monthly rather
uninteresting letters concerned, for the most part, with the care and
maintenance of New Zealand sheep, and such meagre details as his Aunt
Clare and Uncle Garrett had bestowed on him from time to time. From
the latter he gathered that his father had been, in his youth, in some
vague way, unsatisfactory, and had departed to Australia to seek his
fortune, with a clear understanding from his father that he was not to
return thence until he had found it.

Robin himself had been born in New Zealand, but his mother dying when
he was two years old, he had been sent home to be brought up, in the
proper Tr