A tall, grey man in the doorway leaned the greater part of his weight on the arm that was stretched down to the handle.

He was looking thoughtfully at a letter that he held in his other hand.

A face familiar enough in caricatures suddenly grew real to me--more real than the face of one's nearest friends, yet older than one had any wish to expect.

It was as if I had gazed more intently than usual at the face of a man I saw daily, and had found him older and greyer than he had ever seemed before--as if I had begun to realise that the world had moved on.
He said, languidly--almost protestingly, "What am I to do about the Duc de Mersch ?" Miss Churchill turned swiftly, almost apprehensively, toward him.

She uttered my name and he gave the slightest of starts of annoyance--a start that meant, "Why wasn't I warned before ?" This irritated me; I knew well enough what were his relations with de Mersch, and the man took me for a little eavesdropper, I suppose.