“I will run to tell papa that you have arrived,” said Helen. “I know what real pleasure the news will give him.” She left the room, and Mr. Jerningham remained for some minutes standing by the table, with the volume of Platonic Dialogues open in his hand, in the very attitude in which she had left him, profoundly meditative of aspect. “How lovely she is!” he said to himself. “Has this Berkshire air the property of making youth beautiful? That young Thorburn is a model for a Greek sculptor, and she--she is as lovely as Phrynè, when Praxiteles saw her returning from her sea-bath. And Mademoiselle and the secretary are in love with each other. I arrive, like the _seigneur du village_ in a French operetta, just in time to assist in a little Arcadian romance. I wonder that De Bergerac should be so absurdly imprudent as to admit this man into his household. He is, no doubt, a nameless adventurer, with nothing but his good looks and some amount of education to recommend him. And he, perhaps, labours under the delusion that our dear recluse is rich. I will take the opportunity of talking to him to-morrow, and opening his eyes on that point. And I must take Theodore to task for his folly. He is as proud as Lucifer, after his own fashion, and would be the last of men to sanction the alliance of his only child with an English adventurer.” It seemed as if Mr. Jerningham took somewhat kindly to his part of _seigneur du village_, and was by no means inclined to the policy of non-intervention in the affairs of these two young people. It may be that, having so long been an actor in the great drama of human passion, he could not resign himself all at once to the passive share of the spectator, who applauds and delights in the youth and beauty, the joy and the hope in which he has no longer an active interest. He knew that it was time for him to fall back into the ranks, and see a new hero lead the great procession; but he could not retire with the perfect grace of a man who has played his part, and is content to know that the part has been well played, and has come to a decent finish. The art of growing old is the one accomplishment which the _beau garçon_ never acquires. For his own part, Harold Jerningham believed that he had retired with a very decent grace from that field in which his victories had been so many. Prone though he was to anatomize the follies of himself and other men, he had not learned the mystery of that vague sentiment of bitterness and disappointment which had tinged his mind during the later years of his life.