stands at the piano, as if about to sing. Two elderly gentlemen enter.
Julia stops playing.)

The elder of the two gentlemen, Colonel Daniel Craven,
affects the bluff, simple veteran, and carries it off
pleasantly and well, having a fine upright figure, and
being, in fact, a goodnaturedly impulsive, credulous
person who, after an entirely thoughtless career as an
officer and a gentleman, is now being startled into
some sort of self-education by the surprising
proceedings of his children.

His companion, Mr. Joseph Cuthbertson, Grace's father,
has none of the Colonel's boyishness. He is a man of
fervent idealistic sentiment, so frequently outraged by
the facts of life, that he has acquired an habitually
indignant manner, which unexpectedly becomes
enthusiastic or affectionate when he speaks.

The two men differ greatly in expression. The Colonel's
face is lined with weather, with age, with eating and
drinking, and with the cumulative effects of many petty
vexations, but not with thought: he is still fresh, and
he has by no means full expectations of pleasure and
novelty. Cuthbertson has the lines of sedentary London
brain work, with its chronic fatigue and longing for
rest and recreative emotion, and its disillusioned
indifference to adventure and enjoyment, except as a
means of recuperation.