There was a look of calm resignation on Charley Vining’s face as he met his father at their early breakfast that morning, to which he had descended without a trace of excitement. He was certainly carefully dressed, his dark-blue morning coat and vest and grey trousers fitting his fine figure admirably, while the utter want of constraint displayed told of breeding as plainly as did his well-cut handsome features.

Well might Sir Philip gaze with pride in his son’s face, lit up now by the pleasant smile of greeting; and even he, the smooth cleanly-shaven old courtier of a bygone school, owned to himself that it would be a sin and a shame to cut off even a hair of the crisp golden beard that swept down upon his son’s breast.

Charley’s face was paler now than when we first met him. The ruddy tan had disappeared, to leave his skin pure, fair, and soft as a woman’s; but there was no show of effeminacy there. His firm look of determination swept that away, and he was, indeed, that morning a bridegroom of whom any woman might have been proud.

“A good half-hour yet,” said Charley, referring to his watch. “I shall have a cigar in the shrubbery before we start, dad.” And he nodded to his father and the friends who were to accompany them. “Shall you have both carriages?”

“Yes, my dear boy, yes!” exclaimed Sir Philip nervously, as his snu............