Jack Raynor

Raynor moves easily among the fashionable set, carrying news and judgments from one drawing-room to the next, and his reports on the mysterious Dr. Barritz both fascinate and unsettle the young woman writing her diary. He is likable and dangerous at once, a man who 'observes no game laws' and exterminates reputations without pausing for breath, yet he and the narrator share a genuine old friendship from their Redhorse days. His gossip shapes how the diarist sees Barritz, making him a quiet engine of the story's romantic and social tension.