All this was rather amusing to the speculative and speculating Sir Willowby Patterne who arrived at Glen Sporran a fortnight later than Roger and Lucy. He must then have been about thirty. As you surmise from his name, he was descended from a famous mid-nineteenth century baronet. His grandfather (in diplomacy) married a Russian lady of the Court after the Napoleonic wars when Russians were in the fashion. But I think it wholly unfair to attribute to this alliance the curious vein of cruelty which ran through his descendants and which in Willowby’s father was slaked by the contemporary British field sports. This father died from the envenomed bite of an impaled badger, and in Willowby’s case there was a long minority; so that he started at twenty-one—already a subaltern in the Guards—with quite a respectable fortune to "blue." He had been a vicious, tipsy boy at Eton and did not improve as he grew older. One thing that developed with him into a mania was the love of killing. He had seen a little service in the Sudan, but disgusted his brother officers by his exultation over the more gory episodes in skirmishes (he generally kept out of battles), and by his interest in executions and floggings. Owing to family influence he was for a very brief time in the suite of a travelling Royalty; but an episode in the garden of a Lisbon hotel, when he with a friend was seen worrying a cat to death with two bull-terriers—and laughing frenziedly the while—put an end to that appointment. He had had some success on the turf and in steeplechase riding, and over shooting pigeons at Monte Carlo; had betrayed quite a number of trusting women—including his wife; but nevertheless was rather popular still in Society, especially the society of rich, idle women, seeking after sensation without scandal. What there was about him, save his faultless tailoring and evil reputation to attract women, a man like Brentham could not understand. His face was thin and he had those deep ugly lines around the mouth, that tightness of skin over the temples and jaw, the thin lips and thin hair, aquiline nose, and thin capable hands that go with cruelty and pitilessness. But that women _did_ run after him, there was no denying; though at this time his wife was shudderingly seeking grounds for divorce, or at any rate separation, which would satisfy a male judge and jury.