coming back. But I don't doubt I shall ask you, if you'll be so good as
to let me, for the help of a hint or two: as to how to do, don't you
know? and not to--what do you fellows call it?--BE done. Now about one
of THESE things--!"

One of these things was the lift in which, at no great pace and with
much rumbling and creaking, the porter conveyed the two gentlemen to the
alarming eminence, as Mr. Longdon measured their flight, at which
Vanderbank perched. The impression made on him by this contrivance
showed him as unsophisticated, yet when his companion, at the top,
ushering him in, gave a touch to the quick light and, in the pleasant
ruddy room, all convenience and character, had before the fire another
look at him, it was not to catch in him any protrusive angle. Mr.
Longdon was slight and neat, delicate of body and both keen and kind of
face, with black brows finely marked and thick smooth hair in which the
silver had deep shadows. He wore neither whisker nor moustache and
seemed to carry in the flicker of his quick brown eyes and the positive
sun-play of his smile even more than the equivalent of what might,
superficially or stupidly, elsewhere be missed in him; which was mass,
substance, presence--what is vulgarly called importance. He had indeed
no presence but had somehow an effect. He might almost have been a
priest if priests, as it occurred to Vanderbank, were ever such dandies.
He had at all events conclusively doubled the Cape of the years--he
would never again see fifty-five: to the warning light of that bleak
headland he presented a back sufficiently conscious. Yet though to
Vanderbank he couldn't look young he came near--strikingly and
amusingly--looking new: this after a minute appeared mainly perhaps
indeed in the perfection of his evening dress and the special smartness
of the sleeveless overcoat he had evidently had made to wear with it and
might even actually be wearing for the first time. He had talked to