The marks of the Vicar of Lockleigh were a big, athletic figure, a candid, natural countenance, a capacious appetite and a tendency to indiscriminate laughter.

Isabel learned afterwards from her cousin that before taking orders he had been a mighty wrestler and that he was still, on occasion--in the privacy of the family circle as it were--quite capable of flooring his man.

Isabel liked him--she was in the mood for liking everything; but her imagination was a good deal taxed to think of him as a source of spiritual aid.

The whole party, on leaving lunch, went to walk in the grounds; but Lord Warburton exercised some ingenuity in engaging his least familiar guest in a stroll apart from the others.
"I wish you to see the place properly, seriously," he said.

"You can't do so if your attention is distracted by irrelevant gossip." His own conversation (though he told Isabel a good deal about the house, which had a very curious history) was not purely archaeological; he reverted at intervals to matters more personal--matters personal to the young lady as well as to himself.