mouth (better at all events than a mean mouth); it was coarse now, but
with strange lines of gentleness breaking in upon its tendency to
violence. But his carriage, though he was pre-eminently a well-made man,
was the attribute most spoilt about him. He had the blustering yet
shuffling bearing of a man who is fully convinced that he has gone to
the dogs, and it did not alter its expression that he was making an
effort to quit his canine associates. Perhaps the effort required to be
confirmed before its effects could be seen; perhaps he was not setting
about the right way of redeeming himself, after all.

Mr. Baring was pompous in his high breeding--the first gentleman in
Europe was pompous also. Mr. Baring brought forward his intended
son-in-law as his young friend, and alluded pointedly to the summer
evening and its event as an "auspicious occasion." But he was cut short
by a frosty glance from Die, and a brief remark that she was not sure
that this evening and its party were more auspicious than usual.

Although Miss Baring was a person of very little consequence in her
father's house, she acted on Mr. Baring as a drag. Her cold looks
inadvertently damped him; and she had a way, which he could not account
for in his daughter, of making blunt speeches, like that on the
auspicious occasion and on her being left a rich young widow, if Gervase
Norgate did for himself smartly. This was discomfiting even to a man who
piqued himself on his resources in conversation. Die had uttered twice
as many of these abrupt, unamiable, unanswerable rejoinders within
these twenty-four hours, since she had accepted Gervase Norgate's hand.

Whatever Mr. Baring thought of the rebuff, he was above exhibiting any
sign of his feelings, and no one could have refused him the tribute of
consideration for the position of his companions, as he blandly
announced that he had the day's 'Chronicle' to read, and begged to be
excused for accomplishing the task before post-time. He retired to sip
his tea and disappear behind the folds of his newspaper. It was the
first evening for a dozen years that he had not handled cue or
fingered cards.

Gervase Norgate, assuming his character of a man about to amend his
ways, marry, and settle, sat by Die Baring. He noted and summed up the
girl's good points, as no man in love ever yet did. She was a
finer-looking woman than he had supposed,--one to be proud of as he
presented her to his friends as his wife; pity