The marquis was about fifty years of age, more worn than his years would account for, yet younger than his years in expression, for his conscience had never bitten him very deep. He was middle-sized, broad-shouldered but rather thin, with fine features of the aquiline Greek type, light-blue hazy eyes, and fair hair, slightly curling and streaked with gray. His manners were those of one polite for his own sake. To his remote inferiors he was kind--would even encourage them to liberties, but might in turn take greater with them than they might find agreeable. He was fond of animals-- would sit for an hour stroking the head of Demon, his great Irish deer-hound; but at other times would tease him to a wrath which touched the verge of dangerous. He was fond of practical jokes, and would not hesitate to indulge himself even in such as were incompatible with any genuine refinement: the sort had been in vogue in his merrier days, and Lord Lossie had ever been one of the most fertile in inventing, and loudest in enjoying them. For the rest, if he was easily enraged, he was readily appeased; could drink a great deal, but was no drunkard; and held as his creed that a God had probably made the world and set it going, but that he did not care a brass farthing, as he phrased it, how it went on, or what such an insignificant being as a man did or left undone in it. Perhaps he might amuse himself with it, he said, but he doubted it. As to men, he believed every man loved himself supremely, and therefore was in natural warfare with every other man. Concerning women he professed himself unable to give a definite utterance of any sort--and yet, he would add, he had had opportunities. The mother of Florimel had died when she was a mere child, and from that time she had been at school until her father brought her away to share his fresh honours. She knew little, that little was not correct, and had it been, would have yet been of small value. At school she had been under many laws, and had felt their slavery: she was now in the third heaven of delight with her liberty. But the worst of foolish laws is, that when the insurgent spirit casts them off, it is but too ready to cast away with them the genial self-restraint which these fretting trammels have smothered beneath them.