From having been a hot-tempered, untameable, high-spirited boy, he was now, or so it seemed to her, a cool, restrained man of the world, old for his years.

In fact it was he who was now a stranger--but a stranger who had most attractive manners, and who had somehow slipped very easily into their everyday life.

Janet liked his deferential manner to the master of the house, she enjoyed his kindly and good-humoured, if slightly satirical dealings with Jack and with pretty Rosamund, and she was very grateful to him for the way he treated queer, little Timmy, her own beloved changeling child.
And now something happened that touched her, and made her suddenly feel as if she was with the old Godfrey Radmore again.
"Look here," he said, in a low, hesitating voice, "I want to tell you, Janet, that I didn't know till yesterday about George.

You'll think me a fool--but somehow I always thought of him as being safe in India." And then with sudden passion he asked:--"How can you say that everything is the same in Old Place with George not here?
Why, to me, George was as much part of Old Place as--as Betty is!" "We all thought you knew--at least I wasn't sure." "Thank God _he_ didn't think so poorly of me as that," he muttered, and then he looked away, his eyes smarting with unshed tears.

"Nothing will ever be the same to me again without George in the world." As she said nothing, he went on with sudden passion:--"Every other country in Europe has changed utterly since the War, but England seemed to me, till last night, exactly the same--only rather bigger and more bustling than nine years ago." He drew a long breath.