room, and Lena Houghton also prepared to greet him most pleasantly.

I looked with much interest at Sigismund Zaluski, and as I looked I
partly understood why Miss Houghton had been prejudiced against him
at first sight. He had lived five years in England, and nothing
pleased him more than to be taken for an Englishman. He had had his
silky black hair closely cropped in the very hideous fashion of the
present day; he wore the ostentatiously high collar now in vogue;
and he tried to be sedulously English in every respect. But in
spite of his wonderfully fluent speech and almost perfect accent,
there lingered about him something which would not harmonise with
that ideal of an English gentleman which is latent in most minds.
Something he lacked, something he possessed, which interfered with
the part he desired to play. The something lacking showed itself in
his ineradicable love of jewellery and in a transparent habit of
fibbing; the something possessed showed itself in his easy grace of
movement, his delightful readiness to amuse and to be amused, and in
a certain cleverness and rapidity of idea rarely, if ever, found in
an Englishman.

He was a little above the average height and very finely built; but
there was nothing striking in his aquiline features and dark grey
eyes, and I think Miss Houghton spoke truly when she said that he
was 'Not even good-looking.' Still, in spite of this, it was a face
which grew upon most people, and I felt the least little bit of
regret as I looked at him, because I knew that I should persistently
haunt and harass him, and should do all that could be done to spoil
his life.

Apparently he had forgotten all about Russia and Bulgaria, for he