she cherished or in the vision she had retained in her memory.  Without being above the medium male height, he was admirably shaped by war, sport, and exercise.  His neat head, with its thick, crispy hair, in which there was already a streak of gray, was set on his shoulders at just the right poise for command.  The high-bridged nose, inherited from the Umfravilles, was of the kind commonly considered to show “race.”  The eyes had the sharpness, and the thin-lipped mouth the inflexibility, that go with a capacity for quick decisions.  While he was not so imposing in mufti as in his uniform, the trim traveling-suit of russet brown went well with the bronze tint of the complexion.  It was so healthy a bronze, as a usual thing, that his present pallor was the more ashen from contrast.

Knowing from his telegram the hour at which to expect him, she had gone down the driveway to meet him when she saw him dismiss his taxicab at the gate.  She chose to do this in order that their first encounter might take place out-of-doors.  With the windows of the neighboring houses open and people sitting on verandas or passing up and down the road, they could exchange no more than some conventional greeting.  She would assume nothing on the ground of their past standing toward each other.  He seemed to acquiesce in this, since he showed no impatience at being restricted to the formality of shaking hands.

Happily for both, commonplace words were given them—­questions and answers as to his voyage, his landing, his hotel.  He came to her relief, too, as they sauntered toward the house, by commenting on its dignity and Georgian air, as well as by turning once or twice to look at the view.  Nearing the steps she swerved from the graveled driveway and began to cross the lawn.

“We won’t go in just yet,” she explained.  “Papa is there.  He felt he ought to dress and come downstairs to receive you.  He’s very far from well.  I hope you’ll do your best not to—­to think of him too harshly.”

“I shouldn’t think harshly of any one simply because he’d had business bad luck.”

“He has had business bad luck—­but that isn’t all.  We’ll sit here.”

Taking one corner of a long garden-seat that stood in the shade of an elm, she signed to him to take the other.  On the left they had the Corinthian-columned portico of the garden front of the house; in the distance, the multicolored slopes of the town.  Olivia, at least, felt the stimulating effect of the, golden forenoon sunshine.

As for Ashley, in spite of his outward self-possession, he was too bewildered to feel anything at all.  Having rushed on from New York by night, he was now getting his first daylight glimpse of America; and, though, owing to more urgent subjects for, thought, he was not consciously giving his attention to things outward, he had an oppressive sense of immensity and strangeness.  The arch of the sky was so sweeping, the prospect before them so gorgeous, the sunlight so hard, and the distances so clear!  For the first time in his life a new continent aroused in him an odd sense of antagonism.  He had never had it in Africa or Asia or in the isles of the Southern Sea.  There he had always gone with a sense of power, with the instinct of the conqueror; while here....  But Olivia was speaking, saying things too appalling for immediate comprehension.