Father and son greeted the men over the shoulders of Mrs. Laithe, and Ewing was presented. There was an inclination of the son's head, and a careless glance of his waiting eyes; from the father, a jerky, absent "How-d'you do--How-d'you do!" They moved by chatting stages to the library. The elder Teevan, carefully pointing the ends of his small, dark mustache, stood with his back to the dying fire, a coffee cup in one hand, a cigarette in the other, twittering gallantly of a town's desolation wrought by the going away of Mrs. Laithe; and of a town renewed by her great-hearted return. "A preciously timed relenting," he called it, with a challenging sigh toward the lady, as he gracefully flicked back a ringlet of the lustrous brown hair that had fallen low on his brow. Ewing thought it wonderful hair on a man whose face, though ruddy in hue, showed signs of age. There were deep lines at the corners of those gallantly flashing eyes, and their under lids drooped. The skin was shrunk tightly over the high, thin nose, the cheeks were less than plump, and the neck revealed some unhappy wrinkles. Sadly, too, his voice failed at supreme moments. It was tragic, Ewing thought, to listen to a sentence valiantly begun, only to hear the voice crack on a crucial word. Mrs. Laithe received the little man's tribute with a practiced indifference, chatting absently, meanwhile, with the son. Presently she led Ewing and the younger Teevan to the drawing room to admire a huge jar of roses for which she thanked Teevan. Back in the library Piersoll was listening to a salmon-fishing story of Bartell's. The elder Teevan genially overlooked the scene, humming lightly to himself the catch air from a late musical comedy. He turned to study a bit of Japanese bronze on the mantel behind him, screwing a single glass into an eye. When he had scanned the bronze with a fine little air of appreciation he replaced it, resumed his jaunty humming, and idly picked up a card that had been thrown beside it. Carelessly under the still fixed monocle he brought the words "Mr. Gilbert Denham Ewing." A moment he held it so in fingers that suddenly trembled. His head went sharply back, the glass dropped from his eye, dangling on its silken ribbon, and his little song died. He glanced about him, observing the two groups to be still inattentive. Placing a supporting hand on the mantel he set the glass firmly again and studied the card a second time. Another glance through the rooms, and he resumed his song, crumpling the card in his hand. Then, turning, he stood once more before the fire, his hands comfortably at his back. One of them tossed the card into the grate, and his song again ceased.