Hilary and Peter gondoled to Lord Evelyn Urquhart's residence, a rather exquisite little old palace called Ca' delle Gemme, and were received affectionately by the tall, slim, dandified-looking young-old man, with his white ringed hands and high sweet voice and courtly manner. He had aged since Peter remembered him; the slim hands were shakier and the near-sighted eyes weaker and the delicate face more deeply lined with the premature lines of dissipation and weak health. He put his monocle in his left eye and smiled at Peter, with the old charming smile that was like his nephew's, and tilted to and fro on his heels. "Not changed at all, as far as I can see," he said to Peter, with the same mincing, finicking pronunciation that had pleased the boy Peter eight years ago. "Only my sight isn't what it was. _Are_ you changed at all? Do you still like Bow rose-bowls better than anything except Denis? Denis is coming here soon, you know, so I shall be able to discover. Oh, I beg pardon--Mr. Peter Margerison, Mr. Cheriton." Mr. Cheriton was a dark, sturdy young man with an aggressive jaw, who bowed without a smile and looked one rather hard in the face. Peter was a little frightened of him--these curt, brisk manners made him nervous always--and felt a desire to edge behind Hilary. He gathered that Hilary and Cheriton did not very much like one another. He knew what that slight nervous contraction of Hilary's forehead meant. Dinner was interesting. Lord Evelyn told pleasant and funny stories in his high, tittering voice, addressing himself to all his guests, but looking at Peter when he came to his points. (People usually looked at Peter when they came to the points of their stories.) Hilary talked a good deal and drank a good deal and ate very little, and was obviously on very friendly terms with Lord Evelyn and on no terms at all with Mr. Cheriton. Cheriton looked a good deal at Peter, with very bright and direct eyes, and flung into the conversation rather curt and spasmodic utterances in a slightly American accent. He seemed a very decided and very much alive young man, a little rude, thought Peter, but possibly that was only his trans-Atlantic way, if, as his voice hinted, he came from America. Once or twice Peter met the direct and vivid regard fixed upon him, and nearly was startled into "I beg your pardon," for there seemed to him an odd element of accusation in the look. "But it isn't my fault," he told himself reassuringly. "I've not done anything, I'm sure I haven't. It's just the way he's made, I expect. Or else people have done him badly once or twice, and he's always thinking it's going to happen again. Rough luck on him; poor chap." After dinner they went into what Lord Evelyn called the saloon. "Where I keep my especial treasures," he remarked to Peter. "You'd like to walk round and look at some of them, I expect. These bronzes, now--," he indicated two statuettes on brackets by the door.