The League of the Leopard by Harold Bindloss

It was a pleasant summer evening when Hilton Dane leaned against a beech trunk outside Thomas Chatterton's villa which stands upon a hillside above the Solway shore. He was a tall, fair-haired man who looked older than his age, twenty-five, with steady blue eyes, and usually a somewhat masterful air; but just then his eyes were wistful, and his face, which betokened an acquaintance with the tropical sun, expressed somewhat tempered satisfaction. He had certainly cause for the latter feeling, because, after toiling hard at railroad building in a foreign land, it was comforting to know that he had earned the right to rest a while in that peaceful retreat.

The sun still touched the velvet lawn, though the shadows lengthened across it, and the larch wood behind the red-tiled building diffused resinous odors. The grass sloped to a river which came down amber-tinted from the stretch of heather growing black against the east, and, curving round two meadows, flashed through the gloom of fir branches into a deep pool. All this was pleasant to the wanderer newly returned from the glare of the desolate pampa and the turmoil of dusty construction camps; but Dane found the keenest pleasure in watching his companion.