A colourless footman with light hair and weak eyes, in a very washed-out lilac-striped jacket and dusty gray trousers, answered the bell, and showed Streightley into the dining-room. This was a cheerless apartment, painted salmon-colour, with a dozen Cromwell chairs in faded American cloth and spurious oak ranged round the room, but with some genuine ancestors, a Lely, a couple of Knellers, a Reynolds--such a conception of female childish purity and grace!--and a Lawrence, hanging on the walls. The Turkey carpet was faded and patched; the green table-cover was stained and torn; the window-blinds were yellow, and damp-stained; and every where there was a _laissez aller_ which generally bespeaks the absence of female government. The mantelpiece was covered with purple velvet blurred with sticky rings made by overflowing glasses; in the centre of it lay an oxydised-silver cigar-ash holder in the form of an open spread leaf, in which still remained the ends of a couple of half-smoked cigars; and in the looking-glass, between the glass and the frame, were invitation-cards, photographs of boxers, and ladies of the Parisian theatres, all wearing the same scanty drapery and leering the selfsame leer,--applications for payment of queen's taxes, and notices that the "collector had called" for the water-rate. Robert Streightley had gazed round him; and with the power of appreciation innate in him had remarked these various objects and indications when the door opened quickly, and Mr. Guyon entered the room. Mr. Guyon, none but he; no mistaking him. In the bold face that flashed upon him Streightley recognised a coarser and stronger rendering of Miss Guyon's every feature: the delicately-cut slightly aquiline nose, the small rounded chin, the vivacious green-gray eye. Mr. Guyon's hair, which was rather sparse and thin, was of a different colour from his daughter's; was indeed in itself of two distinct hues, being very black and glossy in certain lights, and very purple and lustreless in others. His complexion, too, was peculiar,--mottled and speckled, something like a plover's egg, save just under the eyes, on the top of the cheekbones, where it had a very roseate hue. He was dressed in a loose blue-silk jacket with a red collar and red sleeve-linings, and wore a pair of Turkish trousers, tied round the waist with a cord like a bell-rope. His turn-down collar was cut very low, showing a great deal of bony throat; his wristbands were long, fastened with elaborate carbuncle studs, and coming far down over his white, well-shaped hands. He wore striped-silk socks of the rather loud pattern,--which, seen at the theatre under the loose garb of the mandarin, enables us to make a tolerably accurate guess at the identity of the person in the pantomime who is to be "afterwards clown,"--and natty red-morocco slippers. He came into the room with a rush, had Robert Streightley by the hand in an instant, and forced him into a chair as he said,