Norman sat up in his eagerness to explain.
“Oh, he does everything, and does it better than any one else can. He’s a first-rate shot—you should see him stalking a deer! There’s no tiring him. And then, he rides—it’s a treat to see him going across country as straight as a line, and taking everything as it comes, just like a bird. And then, he’s the best-looking fellow in London.”
“What is he like?” she asked, with a woman’s curiosity on this most important point.
“Oh,” said Norman, vaguely, “he’s tall—not too tall—and what you women call graceful; all muscle, and not an ounce of fat. He can knock a man down with a straight one from the shoulder.”
“There’s heaps of men who can do that,” she said, half jealously.
“And he’s got one of those dark, good-looking faces—something like an Italian or a Spaniard; and yet it’s quite English, too—and dark eyes, and—oh, I can’t describe him! You want to see him. All the women rave about him.”
“And so he’s pretty conceited,” she said, with a little curl of her lip. “We had a man here like that once. They called him the ‘Barber’s Block.’ They said he curled his hair. He went off with Dan MacGrath’s niece, and Dan shot him in the arm and brought her back.”
Lord Norman laughed.
“Trafford’s not at all like that,” he said; “and there is not a bit of conceit or vanity about him. I don’t think he knows he’s good-looking, or that most of the women are madly in love with him. He’s not that sort of fellow. He’s grave and quiet. Poor old Trafford!”
“Why do you say ‘poor old Trafford’?” she asked.