His host shrugged his shoulders.
"You know what they're like at that age," he remarked. "He was at
Harrow, but he shied at college, and there was no one to insist upon his
going. The pair of them had only a firm of lawyers for guardians. He's
just a good-looking, clean-minded, high-spirited young fellow, full of
beans, and needing the bit every now and then. But, of course, he's no
different from the run of young fellows of his age, and if an adventure
came his way I suppose he'd see it through."
"And the girl?"
Andrew Pelham rose from his seat.
"I will show you her photograph," he said.
He passed into an inner room divided from the dining-room by curtains.
In a moment or two he reappeared.
"Here it is!" he said, and laid a picture upon the table.
Now Duncombe was a young man who prided himself a little on being
unimpressionable. He took up the picture with a certain tolerant
interest and examined it, at first without any special feeling. Yet in a
moment or two he felt himself grateful for those great disfiguring
glasses from behind which his host was temporarily, at least, blind to
all that passed. A curious disturbance seemed to have passed into his
blood.
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