interest and forced vivacity, when she became conscious for the
first time of a strange young man who was standing alone before
the fireplace looking at her, and frankly listening to all the
nonsense she was talking. She guessed that he had been listening
for some time, and she also saw, before he turned his eyes
quickly away, that he was distinctly amused. Miss Langham
stopped gesticulating and lowered her voice, but continued to
keep her eyes on the face of the stranger, whose own eyes were
wandering around the room, to give her, so she guessed, the idea
that he had not been listening, but that she had caught him at it
in the moment he had first looked at her. He was a tall, broad-
shouldered youth, with a handsome face, tanned and dyed, either
by the sun or by exposure to the wind, to a deep ruddy brown,
which contrasted strangely with his yellow hair and mustache, and
with the pallor of the other faces about him. He was a stranger
apparently to every one present, and his bearing suggested, in
consequence, that ease of manner which comes to a person who is
not only sure of himself, but who has no knowledge of the claims
and pretensions to social distinction of those about him. His
most attractive feature was his eyes, which seemed to observe
all that was going on, not only what was on the surface, but
beneath the surface, and that not rudely or covertly but with the
frank, quick look of the trained observer. Miss Langham found it
an interesting face to watch, and she did not look away from it.
She was acquainted with every one else in the room, and hence she
knew this must be the cowboy of whom Mrs. Porter had spoken, and
she wondered how any one who had lived the rough life of the West
could still retain the look when in formal clothes of one who was
in the habit of doing informal things in them.