He was a man of middle height and spare figure, nearly sixty years old, by constitution rather delicate in health, but wiry and active for his age. A sparse and straggling beard and moustache did not conceal a thin but kindly mouth; his eyes were keen and pleasant; his sharp nose and narrow jaw gave him very much of a clerical air, and this impression was helped by his commonplace dark clothes and soft black hat. The whole effect of him, indeed, was priestly. He was a man of unusually conscientious, industrious, and orderly mind, with little imagination. His father’s household had been used to recruit its domestic establishment by means of advertisements in which it was truthfully described as a serious family. From that fortress of gloom he had escaped with two saintly gifts somehow unspoiled: an inexhaustible kindness of heart, and a capacity for innocent gaiety which owed nothing to humour. In an earlier day and with a clerical training he might have risen to the scarlet hat. He was, in fact, a highly regarded member of the London Positivist Society, a retired banker, a widower without children. His austere but not unhappy life was spent largely among books and in museums; his profound and patiently accumulated knowledge of a number of curiously disconnected subjects which had stirred his interest at different times had given him a place in the quiet, half-lit world of professors and curators and devotees of research; at their amiable, unconvivial dinner parties he was most himself. His favourite author was Montaigne. Just as Mr. Cupples was finishing his meal at a little table on the veranda, a big motor car turned into the drive before the hotel. “Who is this?” he enquired of the waiter. “Id is der manager,” said the young man listlessly. “He have been to meed a gendleman by der train.” The car drew up and the porter hurried from the entrance. Mr. Cupples uttered an exclamation of pleasure as a long, loosely built man, much younger than himself, stepped from the car and mounted the veranda, flinging his hat on a chair. His high-boned, quixotic face wore a pleasant smile; his rough tweed clothes, his hair and short moustache were tolerably untidy. “Cupples, by all that’s miraculous!” cried the man, pouncing upon Mr. Cupples before he could rise, and seizing his outstretched hand in a hard grip. “My luck is serving me today,” the newcomer went on spasmodically. “This is the second slice within an hour. How are you, my best of friends? And why are you here? Why sit’st thou by that ruined breakfast? Dost thou its former pride recall, or ponder how it passed away? I _am_ glad to see you!” “I was half expecting you, Trent,” Mr. Cupples replied, his face wreathed in smiles. “You are looking splendid, my dear fellow. I will tell you all about it. But you cannot have had your own breakfast yet. Will you have it at my table here?”