charming profile with its little blunt nose and rounded chin thrown
up against the dark glistening oak of an old armoire, Joan began to
read. Her clear, high voice seemed to startle the dead beasts whose
heads hung thickly around the room and bring into their wide, fixed
eyes a look of uneasiness.

Several logs were burning sulkily in the great open fireplace,
throwing out a pungent, juicy smell. The aggressive tick of an old
and pompous clock endeavored to talk down the gay chatter of the
birds beyond the closed windows. The wheeze of a veteran Airedale
with its chin on the head of a lion came intermittently.

They made a picture, these two, that fitted with peculiar rightness
into the mood of Nature at that moment. Youth was king, and with all
his followers had clambered over winter and seized the earth. The
red remainders of autumn were almost over-powered. Standing with his
hands behind him and his back to the fire, the old sportsman
listened, with a queer, distrait expression, to the girl's reading.
That he was still putting up a hard fight against relentless Time
was proved by his clothes, which were those of a country-lover who
dressed the part with care. A tweed shooting-coat hung from his
broad, gaunt shoulders. Well-cut riding breeches, skin tight below
his knees, ran into a pair of brown top-boots that shone like glass.
A head and shoulders taller than the average tall man, his back was
bent and his chest hollow. His thin hair, white as cotton wool, was
touched with brilliantine, and his handsome face, deeply lined and
wrinkled, was as closely shaved as an actor's after three o'clock.
His sunken eyes, overshadowed by bushy brows, had lost their fire.
He could no longer see to read. He too heard the call without, and
when he looked at the young, sweet thing upon whom he was dependent