He was an undersized man with scant iron grey hair whose tint seemed to have invaded his complexion. His lips were folded on each other so closely, that Patience watched them curiously at table: when eating they merely moved apart as if regulated by a spring; their expression never changed. His eyes were dark and rather dull, his nose straight and fine, his hands small and very white. He was not an eloquent man at the bar; he owed his immense success to his mastery of the law, to a devilish subtlety, and to his skill at playing upon the weak points of human nature. No man could so adroitly upset an “objection,” no man so terrify a witness. It was said of him that he played upon a jury with the consummate art of a great musician for his instrument. He rarely lost a case. His voice was very soft, his manners exquisite. He was never known to lose his temper. His cold aristocratic face looked the sarcophagus of buried passions. He deeply resented his children’s failure to inherit his brain, but in his inordinate pride of birth, forgave them, for they bore the name of Peele. Hal was his favourite, for she, at least, was bright. May admired her sister-in-law “to death,” as she phrased it, and bored her with attentions. Patience preferred Honora, who puzzled and repelled her, but assuredly could not be called superficial, although her claims to intellectuality were based upon her preference for George Eliot and George Meredith to the lighter order of fiction, and upon her knowledge of the history of the Catholic Church. One day, as Patience was crossing the lawn in front of the house, May called to her from the hall, beckoning excitedly. She and Hal and Honora were standing by a table on which was a saucer half full of what appeared to be dead leaves. As Patience entered, May lifted the saucer to her sister-in-law’s nostrils. “Why? What?” asked Patience, then paused. “Oh,—what a faint, delicious, far-away perfume,” she said after a moment. “What is it?” May dropped the saucer and clapped her hands. Hal laughed as if much gratified. Honora’s eyes wandered to the landscape with an absent and introspective regard. “What is it?” asked Patience again. “Why, it’s dried strawberry leaves,” said May. “Don’t you know that they say in the South that you can’t perceive their perfume unless every drop of blood in your veins is blue? The common people can’t smell it at all.” Patience blushed and moved her head disdainfully, but she thrilled with pleasure. “Won’t you come up and see my room?” said Honora, softly. “You’ve never called on me yet, and I think I have a very pretty room.” “Oh, I’ll be delighted,” said Patience, who was half consciously avoiding Beverly: Peele Manor was without guests for a few hours.