He had been a singularly handsome man in that time which he was exceedingly loath to convince himself had departed--his youth. His firm, though thin--very thin--figure was still erect, well-stayed, and padded, perhaps; his eyes were keen and bright, their smile as insincere, artificial, and hollow as it had been forty years Before. His cheek was not pale, for there was a suspicious dash of red about it, while his well-shaved hair and ragged moustache were dyed beyond a doubt, like his curled whiskers. His mouth was perhaps weak and rather sensual; he had thin white diaphanous hands, with carefully trimmed nails and sparkling diamond rings. In general accuracy of costume he might have passed for a tailor's model, while to Chute's eye his feet were as small, his boots as glazed, as ever; yet he had undergone the tortures of the gout, drunk colchicum with toast and water till he shuddered at the thoughts thereof, and talked surreptitiously of high and dry localities as being most suitable for his health. He had, as we have said, keen--others averred rather wicked--grey eyes, a long and thin aristocratic nose, on which, when ladies were _not_ present, he sometimes perched a gold eyeglass. He was certainly wrinkled about the face; but his smooth white forehead showed no line of thought or care, as he had never known either, yet death had more than once darkened his threshold, and hung above it a scutcheon powdered with tears. He had still the appearance of what he was--a well-shaved, well-dressed, and well 'got-up' old beau and man about town, and still flattered himself that he was not without interest in a pretty girl's eye. He had the reputation of being a courtly and well-bred man; and yet, in his present hilarity, or from some inexplicable cause, he had the bad taste to refer in his jaunty way to his past relations with Trevor Chute, and to mingle them with some praises of his recent visitor. 'Good style of fellow, Desmond!--devilish good style, you know; has a nice place in Hants, and no end of coal-pits near the Ribble,' he continued, after the decanters had been replenished more than once. 'Wishes to stand well with Clare--_your_ old flame, Chute; got over all that sort of thing long ago, of course, for, as a lady writer says, "nothing on earth is so pleasant as being a little in love, and nothing on earth so destructive as being too much so." Desmond has my best wishes--but, Chute, the decanters stand with you.' Chute exchanged one brief and lightning-like glance with Jerry Vane; he felt irrepressible disgust, and for this stinging tone to him would have hated the heartless old man but that he was the father of (as he now deemed her) his lost Clare Collingwood. But Jerry was made to wince too. 'Your visit the other day, Chute, seems quite to have upset poor Ida,' said he, after an awkward pause. 'So sorry to hear you say so, Sir Carnaby,' replied Chute, drily.