arrived at Kestrel, his brother Robert's home on the bank of the Wye
only that morning, having stayed at Bath on the way down; and now he
had got his face burnt in that parti-coloured way peculiar to the
faces of those who have been too long in London.  As he came along
the narrow, rather overgrown avenue, the sound of a waltz thrummed
out on a piano fell on his ears, and he smiled, for music was the
greatest passion he had.  His dark grizzled hair was pushed back off
his hot brow, which he fanned with his straw hat.  Though not broad,
that brow was the broadest part of a narrow oval face whose length
was increased by a short, dark, pointed beard--a visage such as
Vandyk might have painted, grave and gentle, but for its bright grey
eyes, cinder-lashed.  and crow's-footed, and its strange look of not
seeing what was before it.  He walked quickly, though he was tired
and hot; tall, upright, and thin, in a grey parsonical suit, on whose
black kerseymere vest a little gold cross dangled. 

Above his brother's house, whose sloping garden ran down to the
railway line and river, a large room had been built out apart.
Pierson stood where the avenue forked, enjoying the sound of the
waltz, and the cool whipping of the breeze in the sycamores and