this had the immediate effect of prolonging Alfred's visit.

On my return to Glen ten days later she told me she had made up
her mind to marry Alfred Lyttleton.

After what Mrs. Lyttelton has written of her husband, there is
little to add, but I must say one word of my brother-in-law as he
appeared to me in those early days.

Alfred Lyttelton was a vital, splendid young man of fervent
nature, even more spoilt than we were. He was as cool and as
fundamentally unsusceptible as he was responsive and emotional.
Every one adored him; he combined the prowess at games of a Greek
athlete with moral right-mindedness of a high order. He was
neither a gambler nor an artist. He respected discipline, but
loathed asceticism.

What interested me most in him was not his mind--which lacked
elasticity--but his religion, his unquestioning obedience to the
will of God and his perfect freedom from cant. His mentality was
brittle and he was as quick-tempered in argument as he was sunny
and serene in games. There are people who thought Alfred was a man
of strong physical passions, wrestling with temptation till he had
achieved complete self-mastery, but nothing was farther from the
truth. In him you found combined an ardent nature, a cool
temperament and a peppery intellectual temper. Alfred would have
been justified in taking out a patent in himself as an Englishman,
warranted like a dye never to lose colour. To him most foreigners
were frogs. In Edward Lyttelton's admirable monograph of his
brother, you will read that one day, when Alfred was in the train,