He walked over to the desk in his shirt-sleeves, sat down, drew a blank
sheet of paper toward him, and, dipping his pen, drew carelessly a gun-
shy setter dog rushing frantically across the stubble, and after him,
bare-headed, gun in hand, the maddest of men.

"Put a Vandyke beard on him," grinned Ferrall over his shoulder. "There!
O Lord! but you have hit it! Put a ticked saddle on the cur--there!"

"Who is this supposed to be?" began Siward, looking up. But "Wait!"
chuckled his host, seizing the still wet sketch, and made for the door.

Siward strolled into the bath-room, washed a spot or two of ink from his
fingers, returned and buttoned his waistcoat, then, completing an
unhurried toilet, went out and down the stairway to the big living-room.
There were two or three people there--Mrs. Leroy Mortimer, very fetching
with her Japanese-like colouring, black hair and eyes that slanted just
enough; Rena Bonnesdel, smooth, violet-eyed, blonde, and rather stunning
in a peculiarly innocent way; Miss Caithness, very pale and slimly
attractive; and the Page boys, Willis and Gordon, delightfully shy and
interested, and having a splendid time with any woman who could afford
the intellectual leisure.

Siward spoke pleasantly to them all. Other people drifted down--Marion
Page who looked like a school-marm and rode like a demon; Eileen
Shannon, pink and white as a thorn blossom, with the deuce to pay
lurking in her grey eyes; Kathryn Tassel and Mrs. Vendenning whom he did
not know, and finally his hostess Grace Ferrall with her piquant, almost
boyish, freckled face and sweet frank eyes and the figure of an
adolescent.