The new-comer was an elderly man, in a clerical dress. His figure, originally massive and powerful, had thickened and filled out of late years till little of fair proportion or activity remained. In his walk and general bearing there was the same lassitude and want of energy which spoilt his face. The features could never have been regularly handsome; they were too weakly moulded for _any_ style of beauty; but their natural expression was evidently meant to be kindly and genial. This, too, had changed. There was a nervous, worried look about him, as of a man exposed to many vexations and annoyances. It was not grave enough to suggest any great sorrow. Geoffry Knowles's story is very soon told. He was three or four years the Squire's senior; but they had been great friends at college. Few of their old set were left when Geoffry went up to keep his "master's term;" so, unluckily, he was a good deal thrown on his own resources. His evil genius lured him one day to a certain water-party, where he met Laura Harding, the handsome, flashy daughter of an Oxford attorney in large and very sharp practice, who speedily entangled him irretrievably. If Hubert Vavasour had been in the way, it might have been prevented. His thoroughbred instincts would have revolted from the intense vulgarity of the whole family, and the great influence he possessed over his friend's facile mind would all have been exerted to free the latter from a connexion which could only prove disastrous and unhappy. Geoffry Knowles himself, the most indolent and unobservant of men, saw from the first that the fair Laura's _entourage_ was most objectionable; and certain incongruities (to use a mild term) in the lady's own demeanour and dialect struck him now and then painfully, as they would have done any other man well-bred and well-born. But, though conscious of going down hill, he was too idle to try to struggle back again; and when the moment for the final plunge came, he took it resignedly, if not contentedly, expecting no countenance from any of his friends, as he had not sought their counsel. Perhaps, after all, retractation would have been worse than vain. The wily lawyer might have said with the Sultan, Dwells in my court-yard a falcon unhooded, And what he once clutches he never lets go.