I have just been staying with him." She clasped her hands eagerly.
"How _very_ interesting! I know him a little.

_Isn't_ he nice ?" "No," said Mariette resolutely.

"He is magnificent--a saint--a scholar--everything--but not nice!" The girl looked a little puzzled, then angry, and after a few minutes' more conversation she returned to her young men, conspicuously turning her back on Mariette.
He threw a deprecating, half-penitent look at Elizabeth, whose faced twitched with amusement, and sat down in a corner behind her that he might observe without talking.

His quick intelligence sorted the people about him almost at once--the two yeoman-squires, who were not quite at home in Mrs.Gaddesden's drawing-room, were awkward with their tea-cups, and talked to each other in subdued voices, till Elizabeth found them out, summoned them to her side, and made them happy; the agent who was helping Lady Merton with tea, making himself generally useful; Philip and another gilded youth, the son, he understood, of a neighbouring peer, who were flirting with the girl in white; and yet a third fastidious Etonian, who was clearly bored by the ladies, and was amusing himself with the adjutant and a cigarette in a distant corner.

His eyes came back at last to the _pasteur_.