The impression made on him by this contrivance showed him as unsophisticated, yet when his companion, at the top, ushering him in, gave a touch to the quick light and, in the pleasant ruddy room, all convenience and character, had before the fire another look at him, it was not to catch in him any protrusive angle.

Mr.
Longdon was slight and neat, delicate of body and both keen and kind of face, with black brows finely marked and thick smooth hair in which the silver had deep shadows.

He wore neither whisker nor moustache and seemed to carry in the flicker of his quick brown eyes and the positive sun-play of his smile even more than the equivalent of what might, superficially or stupidly, elsewhere be missed in him; which was mass, substance, presence--what is vulgarly called importance.

He had indeed no presence but had somehow an effect.

He might almost have been a priest if priests, as it occurred to Vanderbank, were ever such dandies.
He had at all events conclusively doubled the Cape of the years--he would never again see fifty-five: to the warning light of that bleak headland he presented a back sufficiently conscious.