Mr. Cheriton was a dark, sturdy young man with an aggressive jaw, who bowed without a smile and looked one rather hard in the face.  Peter was a little frightened of him—­these curt, brisk manners made him nervous always—­and felt a desire to edge behind Hilary.  He gathered that Hilary and Cheriton did not very much like one another.  He knew what that slight nervous contraction of Hilary’s forehead meant.

Dinner was interesting.  Lord Evelyn told pleasant and funny stories in his high, tittering voice, addressing himself to all his guests, but looking at Peter when he came to his points. (People usually looked at Peter when they came to the points of their stories.) Hilary talked a good deal and drank a good deal and ate very little, and was obviously on very friendly terms with Lord Evelyn and on no terms at all with Mr. Cheriton.  Cheriton looked a good deal at Peter, with very bright and direct eyes, and flung into the conversation rather curt and spasmodic utterances in a slightly American accent.  He seemed a very decided and very much alive young man, a little rude, thought Peter, but possibly that was only his trans-Atlantic way, if, as his voice hinted, he came from America.  Once or twice Peter met the direct and vivid regard fixed upon him, and nearly was startled into “I beg your pardon,” for there seemed to him an odd element of accusation in the look.

“But it isn’t my fault,” he told himself reassuringly.  “I’ve not done anything, I’m sure I haven’t.  It’s just the way he’s made, I expect.  Or else people have done him badly once or twice, and he’s always thinking it’s going to happen again.  Rough luck on him; poor chap.”

After dinner they went into what Lord Evelyn called the saloon.  “Where I keep my especial treasures,” he remarked to Peter.  “You’d like to walk round and look at some of them, I expect.  These bronzes, now—­,” he indicated two statuettes on brackets by the door.

Peter looked at them, then swiftly up at Lord Evelyn, who swayed at his side, his glass screwed into one smiling eye.

Lord Evelyn touched the near statuette with his light, unsteady, beautifully-ringed hand.

“Rather lovely, isn’t she,” he said, caressing her.  “We found her and the Actaeon in a dusty hole of a place in a miserable little calle off the Campo delle Beccarie, kept by a German Jew.  Quite a find, the old sinner.  What an extortioner, though!  Eh, Margerison?  How much has the old Schneller got out of my pocket?  It was your brother who discovered him for me, young Peter.  He took me there, and we found the Diana together.  Like her?  Giacomo Treviso, a pupil of Verrocchio’s.  Heard of him?  The Actaeon’s not so good now.  Same man, but not so happy.”

He turned the Diana about; he posed her for Peter’s edification.  Peter looked from her to the Actaeon, from the Actaeon to Lord Evelyn’s face.  He opened his lips to say something, and closed them on silence.  He looked past Lord Evelyn to Hilary, who stood in the background, leaning a little against a chair.  It seemed to Peter that there was a certain tensity, a strain, in his face.