Mr. Beaumaroy obediently entered, in the wake of Captain Alec Naylor, who
duly presented him to Mrs. Naylor, adding that Beaumaroy had been kind
enough to make the fourth in a game with the General, the Rector of
Sprotsfield, and himself. "And he and the parson were too tough a nut for
us, weren't they, sir?" he added to the General.

Besides being an excellent officer and a capital fellow, Alec Naylor was
also reputed to be one of the handsomest men in the Service; six foot
three, very straight, very fair, with features as regular as any romantic
hero of them all, and eyes as blue. The honorable limp that at present
marked his movements would, it was hoped, pass away. Even his own family
were often surprised into a new admiration of his physical perfections,
remarking, one to the other, how Alec took the shine out of every other
man in the room.

There was no shine, no external obvious shine, to take out of Mr.
Beaumaroy, Miss Wall's puzzling, unaccounted-for Mr. Beaumaroy. The light
showed him now more clearly than when Mary Arkroyd met him on the heath
road, but perhaps thereby did him no service. His features, though
irregular, were not ugly or insignificant, but he wore a rather battered
aspect; there were deep lines running from the corners of his mouth, and
crowsfeet had started under the gray eyes which, in their turn, looked
more skeptical than ardent, rather mocking than eager. Yet when he
smiled, his face became not merely pleasant, but confidentially pleasant;
he seemed to smile especially to and for the person to whom he was
talking; and his voice was notably agreeable, soft and clear--the voice
of a high-bred man, but not exactly of a high-bred Englishman. There was
no accent definite enough to be called foreign, certainly not to be
assigned to any particular race, but there was an exotic touch about his