Peter demurred at the old. It jarred with one's conceptions of Lord
Evelyn. "I don't suppose he's much over fifty," he surmised.

"No, I daresay," Hilary indifferently admitted. "He's gone the pace, of
course. Drugs, and all that. He soon won't have a sound faculty left. Oh,
I'm attached to him; he's entertaining, and one can really talk to him,
which is exceptional in Venice, or, indeed, anywhere else. Is his nephew
still up here, by the way?"

"Yes. He's going down this term."

"You see a good deal of him, I suppose?"

"Off and on," said Peter.

"Of course," said Hilary, "you're almost half-brothers. I do feel that
the Urquharts owe us something, for the sake of the connexion. I shall
talk to Lord Evelyn about you. He was very fond of your mother.... I am
very sorry about you, Peter. We must think it over sometime, seriously."

He got up and began to walk about the room in his nervous, restless way,
looking at Peter's things. Peter's room was rather pleasing. Everything
in it had the air of being the selection of a personal and discriminating
affection. There was a serene self-confidence about Peter's tastes; he
always knew precisely what he liked, irrespective of what anyone else
liked. If he had happened to admire "The Soul's Awakening" he would
beyond doubt have hung a copy of it in his room. What he had, as a matter
of fact, hung in his room very successfully expressed an aspect of
himself. The room conveyed restfulness, and an immense love, innate
rather than grafted, of the pleasures of the eye. The characteristic of