The count was punctual, and the two men introduced themselves.  Harry had expected to see a handsome foreigner, with black hair, polished whiskers, and probably a hook nose—­forty years of age or thereabouts, but so got up as to look not much more than thirty.  But his guest was by no means a man of that stamp.  Excepting that the count’s age was altogether uncertain, no correctness of guess on that matter being possible by means of his appearance, Harry’s preconceived notion was wrong in every point.  He was a fair man, with a broad fair face, and very light blue eyes; his forehead was low, but broad; he wore no whiskers, but bore on his lip a heavy moustache which was not gray, but perfectly white—­white it was with years, of course, but yet it gave no sign of age to his face.  He was well made, active, and somewhat broad in the shoulders, though rather below the middle height.  But for a certain ease of manner which he possessed, accompanied by something of restlessness in his eye, any one would have taken him for an Englishman.  And his speech hardly betrayed that he was not English.  Harry, knowing that he was a foreigner, noticed now and again some little acquired distinctness of speech which is hardly natural to a native; but otherwise there was nothing in his tongue to betray him.

“I am sorry that you should have had so much trouble,” he said, shaking hands with Harry.  Clavering declared that he had incurred no trouble, and declared also that he would be only too happy to have taken any trouble in obeying a behest from his friend Lady Ongar.  Had he been a Pole as was the count, he would not have forgotten to add that he would have been equally willing to exert himself with the view of making the count’s acquaintance; but being simply a young Englishman, he was much too awkward for any such courtesy as that.  The count observed the omission, smiled, and bowed.  Then he spoke of the weather, and said that London was a magnificent city.  Oh, yes, he knew London well; had known it these twenty years; had been for fifteen years a member of the Travellers’; he liked everything English, except hunting.  English hunting he had found to be dull work.  But he liked shooting for an hour or two.  He could not rival, he said, the intense energy of an Englishman, who would work all day with his gun harder than ploughmen with their ploughs.  Englishmen sported, he said, as though more than their bread—­as though their honor, their wives, their souls, depended on it.  It was very fine!  He often wished that he was an Englishman.  Then he shrugged his shoulders.

Harry was very anxious to commence a conversation about Lady Ongar, but he did not know how at first to introduce her name.  Count Pateroff had come to him at Lady Ongar’s request, and therefore, as he thought, the count should have been the first to mention her.  But the count seemed to be enjoying his dinner without any thought either of Lady Ongar or of her late husband.  At this time he had been