The train from Paddington came into Bodmin Road station with laudable punctuality, and without mischance of any kind; and the dog-cart brought Mr. Distin to Penmorval before half-past eight. Dora was in the drawing-room when he arrived. She had dressed early in order to be ready to welcome her husband's friend; even albeit he came to her with a perfume of the Old Bailey. In spite of Wyllard's praise of his old schoolfellow, Dora had expected a foxy and unpleasant individual, with craft in every feature of his face. She was agreeably surprised on beholding a good-looking man, with aquiline nose, dark eyes, hair and whiskers inclining to gray, slim, well set up, neat without being dapper or priggish--a man who might have been taken for an artist or an author, just as readily as for a lawyer versed in the dark ways of crime. "My friend Wyllard looks all the better for his rural seclusion," said Distin, after he had been introduced to Dora. "He seems to me a younger man by ten years than he was when I met him in Paris just ten years ago. And that means twenty years to the good, you see." "Is it really ten years since you have met?" exclaimed Dora. "Exactly a decade. Our last meeting was a chance encounter in the Palais Royal in the summer of '72, when Paris was just beginning to recover herself after the horrors of the Commune. We ran against each other one day at dinner-time--both making for Véfour's, where we dined together and talked over old times. I thought that evening my friend looked aged and haggard, nervous and worried, and I put it down to the ruling disease of our epoch, high-pressure. I knew it could not be the effect of late hours or dissipation of any kind, for Wyllard was always as steady as old Time. But now I find him regenerated, glorified by rustic pleasures. Happy fellow, who can afford to enjoy his _otium cum dignitate_ in the very prime of life." "You hear what he says, Dora," said Wyllard laughingly. "Now, I daresay what he thinks is: 'How can this poor devil endure his existence out of London--two hundred and forty miles from the clubs--from the opera-house--from the first nights of new plays--the crowd of familiar faces?' I know my friend Distin of old, and that he could not exist out of London any more than a fish can live out of water." "I like my little London," admitted Distin coyly, almost as if he were talking of a fascinating woman. "There's so much in it, and it's such a devilish wicked place, to those who really know it. But I think the country a most delightful institution--from Saturday to Monday." "The cockney stands confessed in that one remark," said Wyllard, laughing. "That is the worst of Devonshire and Cornwall," pursued Distin, in his airy way. "Charming scenery, eminently picturesque; but not available between Saturday and Monday. Now, there is one ineffable charm in those pretty places up the river, and that rural district round Tunbridge Wells." "Pray what is that?"