"Thank you very much," she said, trying to laugh it off. "It is very kind of you to warn me--but really I don't think you need." She looked round her waveringly. "May I introduce you to my friend? Mrs. Colwood--Lady Niton." For her glance of appeal had brought Mrs. Colwood to her aid, and between them they coped with this _enfant terrible_ among dowagers till the gentlemen came in. "Here is Sir James Childe," said Lady Niton, rising. "He wants to talk to you, and he don't like me. So I'll go." Sir James, not without a sly smile, discharged arrow-like at the retreating enemy, took the seat she had vacated. "This is your first visit to Tallyn, Miss Mallory?" The voice speaking was the _voix d'or_ familiar to Englishmen in many a famous case, capable of any note, any inflection, to which sarcasm or wrath, shrewdness or pathos, might desire to tune it. In this case it was gentleness itself; and so was the countenance he turned upon Diana. Yet it was a countenance built rather for the sterner than the milder uses of life. A natural majesty expressed itself in the domed forehead, and in the fine head, lightly touched with gray; the eyes too were gray, the lips prominent and sensitive, the face long, and, in line, finely regular. A face of feeling and of power; the face of a Celt, disciplined by the stress and conflict of a non-Celtic world. Diana's young sympathies sprang to meet it, and they were soon in easy conversation. Sir James questioned her kindly, but discreetly. This was really her first visit to Brookshire? "To England!" said Diana; and then, on a little wooing, came out the girl's first impressions, natural, enthusiastic, gay. Sir James listened, with eyes half-closed, following every movement of her lips, every gesture of head and hand. "Your parents took you abroad quite as a child?" "I went with my father. My mother died when I was quite small." Sir James did not speak for a moment. At last he said: "But before you went abroad, you lived in London?" "Yes--in Kensington Square." Sir James made a sudden movement which displaced a book on a little table beside him. He stooped to pick it up. "And your father was tired of England?" Diana hesitated-- "I--I think he had gone through great trouble. He never got over mamma's death." "Oh yes, I see," said Sir James, gently. Then, in another tone: "So you settled on that beautiful coast? I wonder if that was the winter I first saw Italy?" He named the year. "Yes--that was the year," said Diana. "Had you never seen Italy before that?" She looked at him in a little surprise. "Do I seem to you so old?" said Sir James, smiling. "I had been a very busy man, Miss Mallory, and my holidays had been generally spent in Ireland. But that year"--he paused a moment--"that year I had been ill, and the doctors sent me abroad--in October," he added, slowly and precisely. "I went first to Paris, and I was at Genoa in November."