He took the outstretched hand; his large grasp seemed to swallow it up.
He climbed the rail without agility, paused for a moment, and the moonlight happened to gleam on his face through the gently waving branches as he looked down at her in dumb distress.
Then he turned and walked away across the shimmering grass.
A few minutes later Dora re-entered the drawing room. Her father and mother were seated close together, closer than she had seen them for years. Mrs. Glynde was pale, with two scarlet patches.
Dora collected her belongings, preparatory to going to bed.
"Jem," she said quietly, "is absurdly proud of his new honours. It affects his chin, which has gone up exactly one inch."
The more a man has in himself, the less he will want from other people.
As no one replied to this summons either, by voice or approach, the young man subsided into occupied silence.
He was a very large young man, with a fair moustache which looked almost flaxen against the deep tan of his face. This last, like the rest of him, was ludicrously typical of that race which has wandered farther than the Jews, and has hitherto managed, like them, to retain a few of its characteristics. The Anglo-Saxonism of this youth was almost aggressive. It lurked in the neat droop of moustache, which was devoid of that untidy suggestion of a beer-mug characterising the labial adornment of a northern flaxen nation of which we wot. It shone calmly in the glance of a pair of reflectively deep blue eyes--it threw itself at one from the pockets of an old tweed jacket worn in conjunction with regulation top-boots and khaki breeches.
Moreover, it gave birth to a quiet sense of being as good as any one else, and possibly better, which sat without conceit on his brow.
It would seem that he really did not want to be answered just then, for he did not raise a voice accustomed to dominate the clatter of horses' feet, nor did he pass any comment on the carelessness or criminal absence of some person or persons unknown.
He merely took up his pen again, and proceeded to handle that mighty weapon with an awkwardness suggestive of a greater skill with another instrument only less powerful. He was seated on two reversed buckets, pyramidally balanced, at a small table which had the air of wide capabilities in some other sphere of usefulness. There was a weird cunning in the legs of this table indicative of subtle change into a camp-bed or possibly a canoe.