“Your brother has been good enough to ask me to dinner,” he said, after a little talk about the Goodies and their ailments. “I met him at the club this morning.”
“He wants you to meet Captain Hulbert. Perhaps you know him already?”
“No, he has not been here within my time. He only left the navy a year ago, and he was generally stationed at the utmost ends of the earth, keeping guard over our remote possessions. Have you seen him?”
“Only for an instant. He passed my sister and me yesterday evening in the moonlight. I thought he looked a nice person—but I think women have a natural leaning towards sailors. I could never imagine a seaman telling a falsehood or doing a mean action.”
“There is a kind of open-air manner which suggests truthfulness,” admitted Mr. Colfox. “Yet there have been dark deeds done by sailors; there have been black sheep even in the Queen’s Navee. However, I believe Captain Hulbert is worthy of your good opinion. I have never heard anybody speak against him, and the old people who knew him as a lad seem to have liked him better than Lord Lostwithiel.”
“Do tell me your opinion of Lord Lostwithiel. I am very curious about him. Mr. Crowther talked of him so much the night we were at Glenaveril.”
“Mr. Crowther loves a lord.”
“Please satisfy my curiosity. Is he really such a fascinating personage?”
“He has very pleasant manners. I don’t know what constitutes fascination in a man, though I know pretty well what it means in a woman. Lord Lostwithiel’s manners are chiefly distinguished by repose without languor or affectation—and by an interest in other people so cleverly simulated that it deceives everybody. One finds him out by the way in which people boast of his friendship. He cannot be so attached to all the world. He has a manner which is generally described as sympathetic.”
“Mr. Crowther enlarged a good deal upon his lordship’s admiration for my sister at the Hunt Ball. Was that so very marked?”