Cardross, cordial in his quick, vigorous manner, strolled with his hands in his coat pockets, planting each white-shod foot firmly as he walked, frequently turning head and shoulders squarely toward his companion when speaking.
He must have been over fifty; he did not appear forty; still, on closer and more detailed inspection Hamil understood how much his alert, well-made figure had to do with the first impression of youth.

Yet his expression had nothing in it of that shadow which falls with years--nothing to show to the world that he had once taken the world by the throat and wrung a fortune out of it--nothing of the hard gravity or the underlying sadness of almost ruthless success, and the responsibility for it.
Yet, from the first, Hamil had been aware of all that was behind this unstudied frankness, this friendly vigour.

There was a man, there--every inch a man, but exactly of what sort the younger man had not yet decided.
* * * * * A faded and very stout lady, gowned with elaborate simplicity, yet somehow suggesting well-bred untidiness, rolled toward them, propelled in a wheeled-chair by a black servant.
"Dear," said Mr.Cardross, "this is Mr.Hamil." And Mrs.Cardross offered him her chubby hand and said a little more than he expected.
Then, to her husband, languidly: "They're playing tennis, Neville.

If Mr.Hamil would care to play there are tennis-shoes belonging to Gray and Acton." "Thank you, Mrs.Cardross," said Hamil, "but, as a matter of fact, I am not yet acclimated." "You feel a little sleepy ?" drawled Mrs.Cardross, maternally solicitous; "everybody does for the first few days." And to her husband: "Jessie and Cecile are playing; Shiela must be somewhere about--You will lunch with us, Mr.Hamil?
There's to be a tennis luncheon under the oaks--we'd really like to have you if you can stay." Hamil accepted as simply as the invitation was given; Mrs.Cardross exchanged a few words with her husband in that perfectly natural drawl which at first might have been mistaken for languid affectation; then she smiled at Hamil and turned around in her basket chair, parasol tilted, and the black boy began slowly pedalling her away across the lawn.
"We'll step over to the tennis-courts," said Cardross, replacing the straw hat which he had removed to salute his wife; "they're having a sort of scratch-tournament I believe--my daughters and some other young people.

I think you'll find the courts rather pretty." The grounds were certainly quaint; spaces for four white marl courts had been cleared, hewn out of the solid jungle which walled them in with a noble living growth of live oak, cedar, magnolia, and palmetto.