Then suddenly across her vision, cutting the sky-line, seeming to divide for a moment heaven above from earth beneath, passed a tall meager figure, and a head of lines clean as if etched by a master's needle. The profile stood as carved in fine ivory; glints of color flashed from hair and beard. The man softly sang a love song as he walked—but he never looked toward the Marchesa.
She sat up suddenly. "Could that be Lord Lynborough?" she thought—and smiled.
Chapter Three
OF LAW AND NATURAL RIGHTS
Lynborough sat on the terrace which ran along the front of the Castle and looked down, over Nab Grange, to the sea. With him were Leonard Stabb and Roger Wilbraham. The latter was a rather short, slight man of dark complexion; although a light-weight he was very wiry and a fine boxer. His intellectual gifts corresponded well with his physical equipment; an acute ready mind was apt to deal with every-day problems and pressing necessities; it had little turn either for speculation or for fancy. He had dreams neither about the past, like Stabb, nor about present things, like Lynborough. His was, in a word, the practical spirit, and Lynborough could not have chosen a better right-hand man.
They were all smoking; a silence had rested long over the party. At last Lynborough spoke.
"There's always," he said, "something seductive in looking at a house when you know nothing about the people who live in it."
"But I know a good deal about them," Wilbraham interposed with a laugh. "Coltson's been pumping all the village, and I've had the benefit of it." Coltson was Lynborough's own man, an old soldier who had been with him nearly fifteen years and had accompanied him on all his travels and excursions.
Lynborough paid no heed; he was not the man to be put off his reflections by intrusive facts.