Mrs. Jacks was well fitted to inspire homage.  Her age appeared to be less than five-and-twenty; she was of that tall and gracefully commanding height which became the English ideal in the last quarter of the century—­her portrait appears on every page illustrated by Du Manner.  She had a brilliant complexion, a perfect profile; her smile, though perhaps a little mechanical, was the last expression of immutable sweetness, of impeccable self-control; her voice never slipped from the just note of unexaggerated suavity.  Consummate as an ornament of the drawing-room, she would be no less admirably at ease on the tennis lawn, in the boat, on horseback, or walking by the seashore.  Beyond criticism her breeding; excellent her education.  There appeared, too, in her ordinary speech, her common look, a real amiability of disposition; one could not imagine her behaving harshly or with conscious injustice.  Her manners—­within the recognised limits—­were frank, spontaneous; she had for the most part a liberal tone in conversation, and was evidently quite incapable of bitter feeling on any everyday subject.  Piers Otway bent before her with unfeigned reverence; she dazzled him, she delighted and confused his senses.  As often as he dared look at her, his eye discovered some new elegance in her attitude, some marvel of delicate beauty in the details of her person.  A spectator might have observed that this worship was manifest to Mr. Jacks, and that it by no means displeased him.

“You are very like your father, Mr. Otway,” was the host’s first remark after a moment of ceremony.  “Very like what he was forty years ago.”  He laughed, not quite naturally, glancing at his wife.  “At that time he and I were much together.  But he went to London; I stayed in the North; and so we lost sight of each other for many a long year.  Somewhere about 1870 we met by chance, on a Channel steamer; yes, it was just before the war; I remember your father prophesied it, and foretold its course very accurately.  Then we didn’t see each other again until a month ago—­I had run down into Yorkshire for a couple of days and stood waiting for a train at Northallerton.  Someone came towards me, and looked me in the face, then held out his hand without speaking; and it was my old friend.  He has become a man of few words.”

“Yes, he talks very little,” said Piers.  “I’ve known him silent for two or three days together.”

“And what does he do with himself there among the moors?  You don’t know Hawes,” he remarked to the graciously attentive Mrs. Jacks.  “A little stony town at the wild end of Wensleydale.  Delightful for a few months, but very grim all the rest of the year.  Has he any society there?”

“None outside his home, I think.  He sits by the fire and reads Dante.”

“Dante?”

“Yes, Dante; he seems to care for hardly anything else.  It has been so for two or three years.  Editions of Dante and books about Dante crowd his room—­they are constantly coming.  I asked him once if he was going to write on the subject, but he shook his head.”