"Very accomplished man, de Cazalet," said Colonel Blathwayt; "uncommonly useful in a country house--sings, and plays, and recites, and acts--rather puffy and short-winded in his elocution--if he were a horse one would call him a roarer--but always ready to amuse. Quite an acquisition." "Who is he?" asked Leonard, looking glum. "My wife picked him up in Switzerland, I hear--that is to say, he seems to have made himself agreeable--or useful--to Mrs. Tregonell and Miss Bridgeman; and, in a moment of ill-advised hospitality, my wife asked him here. Is he received anywhere? Does anybody know anything about him?" "He is received in a few houses--rich houses where the hostess goes in for amateur acting and _tableaux vivants_, don't you know; and people know a good deal about him--nothing actually to his detriment. The man was a full-blown adventurer when he had the good luck to get hold of a rich wife. He pays his way now, I believe; but the air of the adventurer hangs round him still. A man of Irish parentage--brought up in Jersey. What can you expect of him?" "Does he drink?" "Like a fish--but his capacity to drink is only to be estimated by cubic space--the amount he can hold. His brain and constitution have been educated up to alcohol. Nothing can touch him further." "Colonel Blathwayt, we want you to give us the 'Wonderful One-Horse Shay,' and after that, the Baron is going to recite 'James Lee's Wife,' said Mrs. Tregonell, while her guests ranged themselves into an irregular semicircle, and the useful Miss Bridgeman placed a _prie-dieu_ chair in a commanding position for the reciter to lean upon gracefully, or hug convulsively in the more energetic passages of his recitation. "Everybody seems to have gone mad," thought Mr. Tregonell, as he seated himself and surveyed the assembly, all intent and expectant. His wife sat near the piano with de Cazalet bending over her, talking in just that slightly lowered voice which gives an idea of confidential relations, yet may mean no more than a vain man's desire to appear the accepted worshipper of a beautiful woman. Never had Leonard seen Angus Hamleigh's manner so distinctively attentive as was the air of this Hibernian adventurer. "Just the last man whose attentions I should have supposed she would tolerate," thought Leonard; "but any garbage is food for a woman's vanity." The "Wonderful One-Horse Shay" was received with laughter and delight. Dopsy and Mopsy were in raptures. "How could a horrid American have written anything so clever? But then it was Colonel Blathwayt's inimitable elocution which gave a charm to the whole thing. The poem was poor enough, no doubt, if one read it to oneself. Colonel Blathwayt was adorably funny." "It's a tremendous joke, as you do it," said Mopsy, twirling her sunflower fan--a great yellow flower, like the sign of the Sun Inn, on a black satin ground. "How delightful to be so gifted."