The cigars were lighted, and for quite three minutes the two men smoked in silence. One of them had come here to find out how much of his daughter's happiness lay in jeopardy; the other knew what was in the balance, the danger to his niece's happiness, the terrible abyss of misery which yawned at her feet. But both sat there and enjoyed their cigars. They were dressed with scrupulous care, in the uniform prescribed by the world in which they lived as being suitable for gentlemen of their position and of their age; frock coats and dark gray trousers, immaculate collar, and tie with pearl pin. Both wore a seal ring on the little finger of the left hand, and a watch chain of early Victorian design. They might be twins but for their faces. Convention had put a livery on them which they would on no account have discarded. But the faces were very different. Colonel Harris carried his sixty years as easily as if they had been forty. There were not many lines on his round, chubby face, with its red cheeks, and round, child-like eyes. The heavy cavalry moustache, once auburn, now almost white, hid the expression of the mouth, but one felt, judging by the eyes and the smooth forehead, which continued very far now onto the back of his head, that if one were allowed a peep below that walrus-like face adornment one would see a mouth that was kind and none too firm, the mouth of a man who had led other men perhaps but who had invariably been led by his women folk. Now Sir Thomas Ryder was--or rather is, for he is still in perfect health and full vigour--a very different type of man. You have no doubt seen him about town--for he takes a constitutional in the park every day on his way to his work, and he goes to most first nights at the theatres--and if so you will have admired the keen, sharp face, the closely set eyes, the mobile mouth free from moustache or beard: the face is furrowed all over, especially round the eyes, yet he does not look old. That is because of the furrows; they form a wonderful net-work round his eyes, giving them an expression of perpetual keen amusement. The hair is pale in colour--not white but faded--and scanty. Sir Thomas wears it carefully brushed across the top of his head, with a parting on the left side. He has a trick when he is thinking deeply of passing his hand--which is white, slender and tapering--over that scanty covering of what, but for it, would be a bald cranium. Some people said that Sir Thomas Ryder was a man without any sentiment; others that he was a slave to red tape; but no one denied the uncontrovertible fact that he was the right man in the right place. He looked the part and always acted it, and fewer blunders had undoubtedly been committed in the detective department of the metropolitan police since Sir Thomas Ryder took the guiding reins in hand. "I suppose," he said at last, "that you've come to see me about this de Mountford business." "I have," replied Colonel Harris simply.