“Who has the Mainwaring place, mother?” he asked.

“A heavenly person,” Mrs. Ravenel answered.

“Man, I suppose,” Francis laughed.

Mrs. Ravenel nodded assent and repeated:  “Heavenly!  An Irishman; with black hair, very black brows, pale like a Spaniard, about thirty—­”

“Your own age,” Frank interrupted, with a complimentary gesture.

—­“who rides like a trooper, drinks half a glass of whiskey at a gulp, and is the greatest liar I can imagine.”

“It’s enlightening to discover an adored parent’s idea of a heavenly person,” Francis said, with an amused smile.

“He sends me flowers and writes me poetry.  We exchange,” she explained, and there came to her eyes a delightfully critical appreciation of her own doings.

“The heavenly person has—­I suppose—­a name?” Frank suggested.

“Dermott McDermott.”

“Has the heavenly person also a profession?”

“He is”—­Mrs. Ravenel hesitated a minute—­“he is an international lawyer and a Wall Street man.”

“It sounds imposing,” Frank returned.  “What does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” his mother answered. “I have enough of the artist in me to be satisfied with the mere sound.  His English—­”

“His Irish,” Frank interrupted.

—­“is that of Dublin University, the most beautiful speech in the world.  He is here in the interest of the Mainwaring people, he says, who want some information concerning those disputed mines.  Added to his other attractions, he can talk in rhyme.  Do you understand? Can talk in rhyme,” she repeated, with emphasis, “and carries a Tom Moore in his waistcoat-pocket.”

There came a sound of singing outside—­a man’s voice, musical, with an indescribably jaunty clip to the words: 

    “I was never addicted to work,
      ‘Twas never the way o’ the Gradys;
    But I’d make a most excellent Turk,
      For I’m fond of tobacco and ladies.”

And with the song still in the air, the singer came through the shadow of the porch and stood in the doorway—­a man tall and well set-up, in black riding-clothes, cap in hand, who saluted the two with his crop, and as he did so a jewel gleamed in the handle, showing him to be something of a dandy.

Standing in the doorway, the lights from the candelabra on his face and the sunset at his back, one noticed on the instant his great freedom of movement as of one good with the foils.  His hair was dark, and his eyes, deep-set and luminous as a child’s, looked straight at the world through lashes so long they made a mistiness of shadow.  He had the pallor of the Spanish Creole found frequently in the south of Ireland folk.  His mouth was straight, the upper lip a bit fuller than the under one, as is the case when intellect predominates, and his hair was of a singularly dull and wavy black.  But set these and many more things down, and the charm of him has not been written at all, for the words give no hint of his bearing, his impertinent and charming familiarity, the surety of touch, the right word, and the ready concession.