I had begun really to like the doctor, myself.  But I wished to heaven he weren’t, at that critical time, so tactless.  For instance, I have been peremptorily taken by an elbow and led willy-nilly to his waiting car, on Lafayette Street, which is our principal thoroughfare, under the calm, appraising, watching eyes of all feminine Hyndsville.  Not one of whom would fail to remark, casually: 

“Oh, did you see that Miss Smith with Doctor Geddes this morning?  Men are so unsuspicious, aren’t they!”

I couldn’t explain the situation to him, of course, any more than I could explain to Mr. Nicholas Jelnik that his presence in Hynds House, while pleasing to us, was disquieting and displeasing to others.

It was to be expected that this handsome young man, who kept his affairs so strictly to himself that nobody knew anything about them, should arouse the avid curiosity and hold the breathless interest of a little town where everybody had always known everybody else’s business.

Why had he come to Hyndsville?  To find the Hynds jewels, after a century?  Didn’t he know that the Scarlett Witch had the eye of an eagle for the glitter of gold and would long since have discovered whatever of value had been in Hynds House?  Why didn’t he consult older members of the community, who could furnish him with immensely interesting side-lights on the Hyndses?

Mr. Jelnik never explained.  He didn’t ask anybody anything.  He didn’t even employ Hyndsville negroes, who could be expected to gossip:  his household consisted of a stately bronze-colored man-servant who was reputed to be a pagan, and the huge wolf-hound, Boris, his constant companion.

When Doctor Geddes was delicately sounded, the big man explained that he himself had but recently made the acquaintance of his young kinsman; Jelnik was a first-rate chap, declared the doctor; immensely clever, as befitted his father’s son; altogether likeable, but a bit of a lunatic, like all the Hyndses.

It was natural, too, that the young ladies in a small town where young men are at a premium should have noticed this one particularly and expected a like interest on his part.  The inexplicable Jelnik failed to exhibit it.  There was but one house that he visited, and that was Hynds House.

Whatever his reasons for this may have been, and the town named several, the fact remains that Hynds House would never have been so beautiful, the restoration wouldn’t have been so nearly perfect, had it not been for the critical taste of Mr. Jelnik.  He had the European knowledge of beautiful things, and, toward the finer graces of life, the attitude of Paris, of Rome, of Vienna, rather than of New York, of Chicago, or of, say, Atlanta.

There was a glamour about the man.  Whatever he did or said had an indefinable, delightful significance; what he left undone was full of meaning.  His mere presence ornamented and colored common moments so that they glowed, and remained in the memory with a rainbow light upon them.  He was never hurried or flurried, any more than sun and sky and trees and tides are; and he was just as vital, and quite as baffling.