But when people fancied from this look of his that he was an empty-headed fop they soon found themselves immensely mistaken. He was thirty-eight, but looked a gilded youth of twenty; and _was_ sufficiently gilded (as he said), not perhaps exactly to be comfortable, but to enable him to get about comfortably, and see those who were. He had a number of relatives in high places, who bored him, and were always trying to get him married. He had taken up various occupations and travelled a good deal. But his greatest pleasure was the study of people. There was nothing cold in his observation, nothing of the cynical analyst. He was impulsive, though very quiet, immensely and ardently sympathetic and almost too impressionable and enthusiastic. It was not surprising that he was immensely popular generally, as well as specially; he was so interested in everyone except himself. No-one was ever a greater general favourite. There seemed to be no type of person on whom he jarred. People who disagreed on every other subject agreed in liking Vincy. But he did not care in the least for acquaintances, and spent much ingenuity in trying to avoid them; he only liked intimate friends, and of all he had perhaps the Ottleys were his greatest favourites. His affection for them dated from a summer they had spent in the same hotel in France. He had become extraordinarily interested in them. He delighted in Bruce, but had with Edith, of course, more mutual understanding and intellectual sympathy, and though they met constantly, his friendship with her had never been misunderstood. Frivolous friends of his who did not know her might amuse themselves by being humorous and flippant about Vincy's little Ottleys, but no-one who had ever seen them together could possibly make a mistake. They were an example of the absurdity of a tradition--'the world's' proneness to calumny. Such friendships, when genuine, are never misconstrued. Perhaps society is more often taken in the other way. But as a matter of fact the truth on this subject, as on most others, is always known in time. No-one had ever even tried to explain away the intimacy, though Bruce had all the air of being unable to do without Vincy's society sometimes cynically attributed to husbands in a different position. Vincy was pleased with the story of the Mitchells that Edith told him, and she was glad to hear that he knew the Mitchells and had been to the house. 'How like you to know everyone. What did they do?'