Florence
made a little disdainful face as though she guessed who it was; Engle
went to the door.
Even Virginia Page in this land of strangers knew who the man was. For
she had seen enough of him to-day, on the stage across the weary miles
of desert, to remember him and to dislike him. He was the man whom
Galloway and the stage-driver had called "Doc," the sole representative
of the medical fraternity in San Juan until her coming. She disliked
him first vaguely and with purely feminine instinct; secondly because
of an air which he never laid aside of a serene consciousness of
self-superiority. He had established himself in what he was pleased to
consider a community of nobodies, his inferiors intellectually and
culturally. He was of that type of man-animal that lends itself to
fairly accurate cataloguing at the end of the first five minutes'
acquaintance. The most striking of the physical attributes about his
person as he entered were his little mustache and neatly trimmed beard
and the diamond stick-pin in his tie. Remove these articles and it
would have been difficult to distinguish him from countless thousands
of other inefficient and opinionated individuals.
Virginia noted that both Mr. and Mrs. Engle shook hands with him if not
very cordially at least with good-humored toleration; that Florence
treated him to a stiff little nod; that Roderick Norton from across the
room greeted him coolly.
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