“What sort of age?” asked her friend.
“Thirty to thirty-five. You shall see him. But you’re not to go and turn his head; he’s very peaceful and happy as he is.”
Lady Cynthia smiled.
“I don’t think hermits are much in my line. A man’s job is to be up and doing; not to bury himself alive and breed dogs.”
“You tell him so,” said her hostess. “It will do him good.”
II
An excited rush of puppies—fat, bouncing, lolloping puppies; a stern order: “Heel, you young blighters, heel!” in a pleasant, cheerful voice; a laughing greeting from Ada Laverton, and Lady Cynthia Stockdale found herself shaking hands with the Hermit. She shook hands as a man shakes hands, with a firm, steady grasp, and she looked the person she was greeting straight in the eyes. To her that first handshake meant, more often than not, the final estimate of a stranger’s character; it always meant the first. And her first estimate of Desmond Brooke was good. She saw a man of clear skin and clear eye. He wore no hat, and his brown hair, curling a little at the temples, was slightly flecked with grey. His face was bronzed and a faint smile hovered in the corners of the eyes that met hers fair and square. His shirt was open at the neck; the sleeves were rolled up, showing a pair of muscular brown arms. He was clean-shaven, and his teeth were very white and regular. So much, in detail, she noticed during that first half-second; then she turned her attention to the puppies.
“What toppers!” she remarked. “What absolute toppers!”
She picked a fat, struggling mixture of legs and ecstatically slobbering tongue out of the mêlée at her feet, and the Hermit watched her gravely. It struck him that in the course of a fairly crowded life he had never seen a more lovely picture than the one made by this tall slender girl with the wriggling puppy in her arms. And another thing struck him also, though he said nothing. Possibly it was accidental, but the puppy she had picked up, and which was now making frantic endeavours to lick her face, was out and away the best of the litter. Almost angrily he told himself that it was an accident, and yet he could not quite banish the thought that it was an accident which would happen every time. Thoroughbred picks thoroughbred; instinctively the girl would pick the best. His mouth set a little, giving him a look of sternness, and at that moment their eyes met over the puppy’s head.
“Is he for sale?” asked the girl.