In sorrowful earnest, Mr. Lobyer was not a nice young man. He was rich; and there were many people who would have been very glad to think him nice, but who were fain to abandon the attempt, and to demand tribute of admiration for their favourite on other and loftier grounds. And this was very easily done. There is no cub so brutish, no lout so clumsy, uncouth, and insolent, who cannot be made to pass for a rough diamond. Society--especially represented by matrons with marriageable daughters--decided that Mr. Lobyer was a rough diamond, a dear good candid creature, who blurted out every thing he thought. He was an original character; and his unpolished manners were quite a relief after the _fade_ graces and courtesies of over-educated young diplomatists and amateur _littérateurs_. This was what people said of Mr. Lobyer during the two seasons in which he exhibited his clumsy figure and his bullet head in the assemblies of second rate fashion--not the _crême de la crême_, but that excellent milk from whose surface a very decent layer of cream may be gathered in a second skimming--and society smiled upon the wealthiest bachelor from Cottonopolis. He was neither handsome nor clever; he was neither amiable nor well-bred; but he was the wealthiest available bachelor in the circles which he adorned. The gold-worshippers, who saw in Mr. Lobyer the genius of commercial prosperity, were anxious to make the best of their idol. He had feminine admirers who called him handsome; he had masculine allies who declared that he was clever. His features were regular, but cast in that heavy mould which seems better adapted to a good-looking animal than a handsome man. He had big brown eyes; but so has a Newfoundland dog; and the eyes of an intelligent dog possess a beauty of expression which was utterly wanting in the round Vandyke-brown orbs of Thomas Lobyer. His complexion was dark and sallow--pale always--but capable of assuming an unpleasant livid whiteness when he was very angry. The physiognomists were tolerably unanimous as to the character of his thick red lips and sloping chin; but the fair denizens of the western suburbs were equally unanimous in their admiration of his carefully-trained moustache, and the luxuriant beard amidst which he was wont to entangle his fingers when temporarily excluded from animal society. He dressed well, for he had just sufficient good taste to know that his taste was bad, and he delivered himself an unreasoning block of humanity into the hand of the most expensive West-end tailor. "_I_ don't pretend to know much about the build of the thing," he said, when complimented on the fashion of a new overcoat; "but my fellow charges me what he likes, and he gets a cheque for his account by return of post. So I suppose I'm a good customer."