Six or seven years ago, before he left the Army, Claude Rutherford had been an arbiter of fashion among the men of his age. In those days he had taken the business of his outer clothing more seriously than the cultivation of a mind in which fancy had ever predominated over thought; and in those days that element of fancy had entered even into his transactions with tailor and bootmaker, and he had allowed himself some flights of imagination in form and colour. Of all the names given to golden youth the old-fashioned name of "exquisite" was the one that fitted Captain Rutherford. It seemed to have been invented for him. He was exquisite in everything, in his habiliments and his surroundings, in speech, and manner, in every detail of his butterfly life. But when he left the Grenadiers--to the infinite regret of his brother officers, who were all his fast friends--he flung foppery from him as it were a cast-off garment; and from the time he worked seriously at his easel, and began to exhibit his pictures, he had become remarkable for the careless grace of clothes that were scrupulously unoriginal, and in the rear rather than in the van of fashion, the sleeves and coat-tails and checks and stripes of the year before last. But he was still exquisite. The grace and the charm were in his own slender form, and not in the stuff that clothed him. He was not handsome. He was not like David, ruddy and fair to see. He had very little colour, and his pale grey eyes were only brilliant in moments of mirth or strong feeling. He had a long, thin nose, and thin, flexible lips, and his mouth, which was supposed to be the Disbrowe mouth, and a speciality of that ancient race, was strong in character and expressiveness. His hair was light brown, with a natural wave in that small portion which modern barbers allow to remain on the masculine head. A rippling line above his brow indicated that Claude Rutherford might have been as curly as Absalom if he had let his hair grow. In the afternoon shadows that small head and slim form contrasted curiously with the spacious brow of the tall and commanding figure at the other end of the mantelpiece, the imposing presence of Father Cyprian Hammond, at that time a famous personage in London society, the morals and manners whereof he had of late made it his chief business to satirise and denounce. But the people of pleasure and leisure, the butterflies and humming-birds of the world, the creatures of light and colour, have a keen relish for reproof and denunciation, though they may wince under the lash of irony. For them anything is better than not being talked about. It had been asked of Father Cyprian why he, who was so scathing a critic of the follies and general worthlessness of the idle rich, was yet not infrequently to be met in their houses.