Subsequent experience taught me that these were conventional modes by which the conversation was launched every day, like the preliminary moves in chess.  We had another ritual for dinner:  Miss Hicks then inquired if the colonel had taken his ride, and Flaherty played his game of golf.  The next inevitable step was common to both meals.  Colonel Escott would pour himself a glass of the vin ordinaire, a jug of which was set by every plate, and holding it up to the light, exclaim with simulated gusto, ’Ah!  Fine old wine!  Remarkably full rich flavour!’ At this pleasantry we would all gently laugh; and the word was free.

Sir Richard, as I have said, appeared to be an attentive and appreciative listener, not above smiling at our mildest sallies; but, watching him out of the corner of an eye, I noticed that my own observations seemed to strike him with peculiar force—­which led me to talk at him.  Why not to him, with him?  The interest was reciprocal; he would have liked a dialogue; he would have welcomed a chance to commence one; and I could at any instant have given him such a chance.  I talked at him, it is true; but I talked with Flaherty or Miss Hicks, or to the company at large.  Of his separate identity he had no reason to believe me conscious.  From a mixture of motives, in which I’m not sure that a certain heathenish enjoyment of his embarrassment didn’t count for something, I was determined that if he wanted to know me he must come the whole distance; I wouldn’t meet him half-way.  Of course I had no idea that it could be a matter of the faintest real importance to the man.  I judged his feelings by my own; and though I was interested in him, I shall have conveyed an altogether exaggerated notion of my interest if you fancy it kept me awake at night.  How was I to guess that his case was more serious—­that he was not simply desirous of a little amusing talk, but starving, starving for a little human sympathy, a little brotherly love and comradeship?—­that he was in an abnormally sensitive condition of mind, where mere negative unresponsiveness could hurt him like a slight or a rebuff?

In the course of the week I ran over to Pau, to pass a day with the Winchfields, who had a villa there.  When I came back I brought with me all that they (who knew everybody) could tell about Sir Richard Maistre.  He was intelligent and amiable, but the shyest of shy men.  He avoided general society, frightened away perhaps by the British Mamma, and spent a good part of each year abroad, wandering rather listlessly from town to town.  Though young and rich, he was neither fast nor ambitious:  the Members’ entrance to the House of Commons, the stage-doors of the music halls, were equally without glamour for him; and if he was a Justice of the Peace and a Deputy Lieutenant, he had become so through the tacit operation of his stake in the country.  He had chambers in St. James’s Street, was a member of the Travellers Club, and played the violin—­for an amateur rather well.  His brother, Mortimer Maistre, was in diplomacy—­at Rio Janeiro or somewhere.  His sister had married an Australian, and lived in Melbourne.