Page:Her Roman Lover (Frothingham, 1911).djvu/264



R. WARREN sailed for Italy with his daughter. He was a tall and distinguished gentleman whose appearance seemed to place him a little backward, in that social period before the word “gentleman” had become misused. Amiable and restless eyes looked futilely from his slightly emaciated face, and it could be surmised that the heavy military mustache hid a mouth that was amiable and futile also.

He was delighted by the prospect of a change in his existence, and giving full rein to his talent for agreeable chatter and comment, was soon on friendly terms with a large part of the ship’s company. When not talking, he read persistently from Pepys’s Diary, thus testifying to himself his final emancipation from what he characterized as “the thin-blooded” traditions of his own land. He was looking forward to years of leisure which he could enjoy without disgrace, and to possible adventures into sentiment which would no longer be unbecoming to a man of his years.