of a drowned man risen for revelry; his dark gold skin told a traveller’s tale of far-off pleasurable weather; and the bare hand that lay on his knee was patterned like a snake’s belly with brown marks, doubtless the stains of his occupation; and his face was marked with an expression that it vexed her she could not put a name to, for if at her age she could not read human nature like a book she never would.  It was not hunger, for it was serene, and it was not greed, for it was austere, and yet it certainly signified that he habitually made upon life some urgent demand that was not wholly intellectual and that had not been wholly satisfied.  As she wondered a slight retraction of his chin and a drooping of his heavy eyelids warned her, by their likeness to the controlled but embarrassed movements of a highly-bred animal approached by a stranger, that he knew she was watching him, and she took her gaze away.  But she had to look again, just to confirm her feeling that however fanciful she might be about him his appearance would always give some further food for her imagination; and presently, for though she was the least vain person in the world she was the most egotistical, began to compare the large correctness of his features with the less academic spontaneity of her own.  “Lord!  Why has everybody but me got a straight nose!” she exclaimed to herself.  “But it’s all blethers to think that an indented chin means character.  How can a dunt in your bone have anything to do with your mind?” She rubbed her own chin, which was a little white ball, and pushed it forward, glowering at his great jaw.  Then her examination ended.  She noticed that all over his upper lip and chin there was a faint bluish bloom, as if he had shaved closely and recently but the strong hair was already pressing through again.  That disgusted her, although she reminded herself that he could not help it, that that was the way he was made.  “There’s something awful like an animal about a man,” she thought, and shivered.

“Och, aye!” said Mr. Philip, which was a sure sign that he was upset, for in business he reckoned to say “Yes, yes.”  The two men began by exchange of politenesses about Mr. Frank Gibson, to whom they referred in the impersonal way of business conversations as though he were some well-known brand of integrity, and then proceeded to divest the property in Rio de Janeiro of all interest in a like manner.  It was a house, it appeared, and was at present let to an American named Capel on a five years’ lease, which had nearly expired.  There was no likelihood of Capel requiring any extension of this lease, for he was going back to the States.  So now Yaverland wanted to sell it.  There ought to be no trouble in finding a buyer, for it was a famous house.  “Everybody in Rio knows the Villa Miraflores,” he said.  She gasped at the name and wrote it in longhand; to compress such deliciousness into shorthand would have been sacrilege.  After that she listened more eagerly to his voice,