ty of feature; the pretty mustache accentuating and not
concealing the neat and agreeable mold of his lip; the fine whiteness of
his teeth, his civilized and silken look altogether. The defects of his
face, if one could call them that, did not appear at first glance or
even at second. His forehead had begun to gain on his hair,--it ran up
at the sides in two points,--and his slightly prominent eyes were brown
in the same sense as a horn button or a bit of chestnut-shell is
brown,--while some eyes that we remember were brown like woodland pools
with autumn leaves at the bottom! He did not look English, yet did not
look quite Italian either. He was in fact both, and the thing evenly
balanced. The banker Hunt's brother had married an Italian; Charlie had
been born in Italy and hardly ever stirred out of it; on the other hand
he had found his society largely among the English and Americans in
Florence.

As he stood there, conforming gracefully to a recognized canon of manly
beauty, his neighbor Gerald, who would not have been noticed one way or
the other for his looks, yet from being beside him took on an
indescribable effect of eccentricity. The bone showed plainly around his
eye-sockets and at the bridge of his nose. One eyebrow became different
from the other the moment he regarded a thing analytically; and when he
smiled those who noticed such things could detect that nature had marked
him for recognition: there showed beneath his mustache three of the
broad front middle teeth whereof two are the common portion. For the
remainder, a slight beard veiled the character of his chin and jaw and a
little disguised the thinness of his throat. Above a large forehead his
dark hair rose on end in a bristling bank, like that of most Italian men
at the time. He looked solitary, unsociable, critical, but not
altogether ungentle. His forehead was full of the suggestion of
thoughts, his gray-blue eyes were full of the reflection of feelings,
that you could be comfortably sure he would not trouble you with.

"Well, Gerald, what are you doing with yourself these days?" asked
Charlie as they stood looking on, delaying to seek partners for the
dance. "Immortal masterpieces?"

This innocuous playfulness somehow jarred. Gerald looked down at Charlie
from the side of his eye,--he was by a couple of inches or so the
taller,--then asked in his turn, a little crustily:

"Do you really want to know?"

"Why, no, my dear fellow, I don't, if t