"It's extremely kind of you, Harry, to let me come around like this in the morning. I dare say you want to be working sometimes. I'm really afraid of being in the way, but I was rather at a loose end this morning and I wanted to have a talk with you," said Van Buren apologetically. "Rot. Awfully glad to see you, old chap. Have a cigarette?" "Thanks, Harry, no. I find I'm very much better if I don't smoke till after tea.... We're intimate friends now, and yet you never call me anything but my surname, or 'old chap'. That reminds me, there's a little request I'd like to make of you, Harry." "What's that?" "Call me Matthew--no, call me plain Mat. It would give me real pleasure." Harry smiled rather loudly-- "My dear fellow, I couldn't call you plain Mat. It wouldn't be suitable! You're too good-looking!" Van Buren smiled and shook his head. In its way it was a handsome head in the fair, clean-shaven American style, with shining blond hair. He had very broad shoulders, and a very thin waist, and that naive worldliness of air so captivating in many of his countrymen. Except that he wore a buttonhole of Parma violets, he was dressed in every particular exactly like Harry. But no one would have believed it--he looked so much better dressed. "That's your chaff, Harry. I'm not a Gibson man, and I don't pretend to be." He looked at his hands, which were small and white, the finger-tips brilliantly polished, and said meditatively-- "I'm very much looking forward to meeting your cousin, Harry. I expect she's the ideal of a young English lady. Dark, did you say?" "Rather dark, and very pretty." "It's a curious thing, Harry, that to me a broonette has always more fascination than a blonde. It seems--I may be wrong--as though there's more piquancy, more character." "I quite agree with you," said Harry. "Now the sister--the married one--is very fair." "And she's quite what you call a professional beauty, isn't she?" asked Van Buren with great relish. "My dear fellow, I don't call anyone a professional beauty, and you mustn't either. There's no such thing. I can't think how in America you get hold of these prehistoric phrases! The expression must have been dead long before either of us was born!... Still, she is a beauty all the same." "Is that so? Mind you, Harry, there's something very attractive about a blonde, too. To me golden hair and blue eyes suggest gentleness and womanliness.... What is Mrs. Wyburn like?" "Well, she's rather like an angel on a Christmas card, with her hair down--I mean she was, as a little girl," said Harry quickly. "Now she's considered like 'Love among the Roses' by Burne-Jones." "Do you really mean that, Harry? Why, she must be more beautiful than Miss de Freyne!" "I wouldn't worry about her, if I were you," Harry said. "Why not, Harry?" "Well, you see she's got a husband," said Harry, looking at the ceiling as he puffed his cigarette.