“I hope you will like him.  We saw a good deal of him in Italy, and will probably see a good deal of him here.”

“I’m certain to like him:  you like him.”

“Ah, that’s what you said to the young women who put off their colors and took to sackcloth in the presence of Mr. Holland.  Don’t be too sure that you will like any man because other women like him.  Now, I have, as usual, remained too long with you.  I’m greatly impressed with the situation of the moment.  I don’t say that I think you are wrong, mind you.  Girls should always be on the side of the Bible.  At any rate you have, I repeat, la physionomie du role, and you can’t be far astray if you act up to it.  Good-bye, my dearest.”

CHAPTER VII.

THE DEFENSE OF HOLLAND.

Ella Linton drove to a certain shop not far from Piccadilly,—­the only shop where the arranging of feathers is treated as a science independent of the freaks of fashion,—­and at the door she met a tall man with the complexion of mahogany but with fair hair and mustache.  People nudged one another and whispered his name as they walked past him before standing at the shop window, pretending to admire the feathers, but in reality to glance furtively round at the man.

The name that they whispered to one another after the nudge was Herbert Courtland.

He took off his hat—­it was a tall silk one, but no one who knew anything could avoid feeling that it should have been a solar toupee—­when Mrs. Linton stepped from her victoria.

“Oh, you here!” said she.  “Who on earth would expect to see you here?”

“You,” said he.

“What?”

“You asked me a question.  I answered it.”

She laughed as they walked together to the door of the feather shop.

“It appears to me that you have a very good opinion of yourself and a very bad one of me,” she remarked, smiling up to his face.

“That’s just where you make a mistake,” said he.

“How?”

“If I did not think well of you I should not have ordered Parkinson to make you a fan of the tail of the meteor.”

“Oh, Bertie, you have done that?”

“Why should I not do it?”

“But it is the only one in the world.”

“Ah, that’s just it.  You are the only one in the world.”

She laughed again, looking up to his face.

“Well, we’ll have a look at it, anyway,” said she.

They went into the shop to see the tail feathers of that wonderful meteor-bird which Herbert Courtland had just brought back from New Guinea with him—­the most glorious thing that nature had produced and a great explorer had risked his life to acquire, in order that Mrs. Linton might have a unique feathered fan.

About the same time the Rev. George Holland met in the same thoroughfare his friend and patron, the Earl of Earlscourt.