“It's a bold thing of you to make me so comfortable, Lyle. When I wrote to you to say I was coming, my head was full of what we call country-house life, with all its bustle and racket,--noisy breakfasts and noisier luncheons, with dinners as numerous as _tables d'hôte_. I never dreamed of such a paradise as this. May I dine here all alone when in the humor?” “You are to be all your own master, and to do exactly as you please. I need not say, though, that I will scarce forgive you if you grudge us your company.” “I'm not always up to society. I'm growing a little footsore with the world, Lyle, and like to lie down in the shade.” “Lewis told me you were writing a book,--a novel, I think he said,” said Mark. “I write a book! I never thought of such a thing. Why, my dear Lyle, the fellows who--like myself--know the whole thing, never write! Have n't you often remarked that a man who has passed years of life in a foreign city loses all power of depicting its traits of peculiarity, just because, from habit, they have ceased to strike him as strange? So it is. Your thorough man of the world knows life too well to describe it. No, no; it is the creature that stands furtively in the flats that can depict what goes on in the comedy. Who are your guests?” Mark ran over the names carelessly. “All new to me, and I to them. Don't introduce me, Mark; leave me to shake down in any bivouac that may offer. I'll not be a bear if people don't bait me. You understand?” “Perhaps I do.” “There are no foreigners? That's a loss. They season society, though they never make it, and there's an evasive softness in French that contributes much to the courtesies of life. So it is; the habits of the Continent to the wearied man of the world are just like loose slippers to a gouty man. People learn to be intimate there without being over-familiar,--a great point, Mark.” “By the way,--talking of that same familiarity,--there was a young fellow who got the habit of coming here, before I returned from India, on such easy terms that I found him installed like one of ourselves. He had his room, his saddle-horse, a servant that waited on him, and who did his orders, as if he were a son of the family. I cut the thing very short when I came home, by giving him a message to do some trifling service, just as I would have told my valet. He resented, left the house, and sent me this letter next morning.” “Not much given to letter-writing, I see,” muttered Mait-land, as he read over Tony's epistle; “but still the thing is reasonably well put, and means to say, 'Give me a chance, and I 'm ready for you.' What's the name,--Buller?” “No; Butler,--Tony Butler they call him here.” “What Butlers does he belong to?” asked Maitland, with more interest in his manner.