Otway looked puzzled, a little disconcerted.

“Really, is that how I always struck you?  To me it’s new light on my own character.”

“How did you think of yourself, then?” she asked, looking at him from beneath drooping lids.

“I hardly know; I have thought less on that subject than on most.”

Again there came a silence, long enough to be embarrassing.  Then Olga took up a sketch that was lying on the table, and held it to her visitor.

“Don’t you think that good?  It’s one of Miss Bonnicastle’s.  Let us talk about her; she’ll be here directly.  We don’t seem to get on, talking about ourselves.”

The sketch showed an elephant sitting upright, imbibing with gusto from a bottle of some much-advertised tonic.  Piers broke into a laugh.  Other sketches were exhibited, and thus they passed the time until Miss Bonnicastle and Kite arrived together.

CHAPTER XVIII

Strangers with whom Piers Otway had business at this time saw in him a young man of considerable energy, though rather nervous and impulsive, capable in all that concerned his special interests, not over-sanguine, inclined to brevity of speech, and scrupulously courteous in a cold way.  He seldom smiled; his clean-cut, intelligent features expressed tension of the whole man, ceaseless strain and effort without that joy of combat which compensates physical expenditure.  He looked in fair, not robust, health; a shadowed pallor of complexion was natural to him, and made noticeable the very fine texture of his skin, which quickly betrayed in delicate flushes any strong feeling.  He shook hands with a short, firm grip which argued more muscle than one might have supposed in him.  His walk was rapid; his bearing upright; his glance direct, with something of apprehensive pride.  The observant surmised a force more or less at odds with the facts of life.  Shrewd men of commerce at once perceived his qualities, but reserved their judgment as to his chances he was not, in any case, altogether of their world, however well he might have studied its principles and inured himself to its practice.

He took rooms in Guildford Street.  Indifferent to locality, asking nothing more than decency in his immediate surroundings, he fell by accident on the better kind of lodging-house, and was at once what is called comfortable; his landlady behaved to him with a peculiar respectfulness, often noticeable in the uneducated who had relations with Otway, and explained perhaps by his quiet air of authority.  To those who served him, no man was more considerate, but he never became familiar with them; without a trace of pretentiousness in his demeanour, he was viewed by such persons as one sensibly above them, with some solid right to rule.