He spoke with animation, and his bright eyes glowed with fire as he seized his old friend by the shoulders and used a feigned force to arrest his progress. You see Mr. Gordon Frere was brimming over with happiness. To be six-and-twenty years of age; to be good-looking; to have high animal spirits; to have indulgent tradespeople, and a tolerable sufficiency of pocket-money; to be in love with a very charming girl, and to have your passion returned, are all things calculated to make a man content with life, and disposed to regard human nature from its best point of view. He was pleased to speak of himself as a "creature of impulse," and, by some accident probably, he rightly described himself. Whatever best pleased him for the time being he took up and went in for earnestly and vigorously. He had done so all his life, in cricketing, rowing, riding, at school and college--actually once in reading, when he studied so hard and to so much purpose apparently, that old Mr. Yeldham wrote to Charles, anticipating for his son's chum and his own pupil the highest University honours; but Gordon slacked off, and when the class-list came out, a double-third was all the position awarded him. Up to this time the "impulse" had not been shown very strongly in any love-affairs: he had had his ball-room flirtations, involving bouquet-sending, Rotten-Row riding, Opera-box haunting, &c., as all men have; but he had never--to Charles Yeldham's idea at least--been so really smitten with any one as he announced himself to be with Miss Guyon. So his honest old chum, albeit he had his own views of the probable reception of Gordon's proposal by Mr. Guyon, could not find it in his heart to check him, and only smiled pleasantly as he said: "All right, Gordon; all right, my boy. But you talk of my taking you about here and there, as though I were not a mere child in leading-strings in such a place as this, to be shown each separate sight in the proper order. Now we've seen the fruit and the flowers, and listened to the bands, let us take a look at the people. Tremendous, what you call 'swells,' are they not? No end of crinoline, and flowers, and finery. By Jove! just turn a few of these young ladies to walk through the Temple Gardens, and there would not be much work done that day. Every clerk's nose would be glued to the window; and I verily believe that even old Farrar, our underneath neighbour, would leave his books and his papers for such a refreshing sight. Now there's one,--look there! that tall girl just coming in, with--hallo! steady, young 'un; what's the matter?" Charley Yeldham might well cry "steady;" for Gordon gave a visible start as he turned in the direction indicated by his friend; and his tone was thick and hurried as he said, "That's Miss Guyon and her father--and--who the devil's that man with them?"