So I'll go." Sir James, not without a sly smile, discharged arrow-like at the retreating enemy, took the seat she had vacated.
"This is your first visit to Tallyn, Miss Mallory ?" The voice speaking was the _voix d'or_ familiar to Englishmen in many a famous case, capable of any note, any inflection, to which sarcasm or wrath, shrewdness or pathos, might desire to tune it.

In this case it was gentleness itself; and so was the countenance he turned upon Diana.
Yet it was a countenance built rather for the sterner than the milder uses of life.

A natural majesty expressed itself in the domed forehead, and in the fine head, lightly touched with gray; the eyes too were gray, the lips prominent and sensitive, the face long, and, in line, finely regular.

A face of feeling and of power; the face of a Celt, disciplined by the stress and conflict of a non-Celtic world.

Diana's young sympathies sprang to meet it, and they were soon in easy conversation.
Sir James questioned her kindly, but discreetly.