er. Men saw his cruel young jowl
and low forehead, and noticed that his eyes were small. He had a good,
swaggering military figure to which uniform was becoming, and a kind of
animal good looks which would deteriorate early. His colour would fix
and deepen with the aid of steady daily drinking, and his features would
coarsen and blur, until by the time he was forty the young jowl would
have grown heavy and would end by being his most prominent feature.

While he had remained in England, Walderhurst had seen him occasionally,
and had only remarked and heard unpleasant things of him,--a tendency to
selfish bad manners, reckless living, and low flirtation. He once saw
him on the top of a bus with his arm round the waist of an awful,
giggling shop-girl kind of person, who was adorned with tremendous
feathers and a thick fringe coming unfrizzled with the heat and sticking
out here and there in straight locks on her moist forehead. Osborn
thought that the arm business had been cleverly managed with such
furtiveness that no one could see it, but Walderhurst was driving
solemnly by in his respectable barouche, and he found himself gazing
through his monocle directly at his relative, and seeing, from the
street below, the point at which the young man's arm lost itself under
the profusely beaded short cape. A dull flush rose to his countenance,
and he turned away without showing any sign of recognition; but he was
annoyed and disgusted, because this particular kind of blatantly vulgar
bad taste was the sort of thing he loathed. It was the sort of thing
which made duchesses of women who did alluring "turns" at music halls or
sang suggestive songs in comic opera, and transformed into the
chatelaines of ancient castles young persons who had presided at the
ribbon counter. He saw as little as possible of his heir presumptive
after this, and if the truth were told, Captain Alec Osborn was
something of a factor in the affair of Miss Emily Fox-Seton. If
Walderhurst's infant son had lived, or if Osborn had been a refined,
even if dull, fellow, there are ten chances to one his lordship would
have chosen no second marchioness.

Captain Osborn's life in India had not ended in his making no further
debts. He was not a man to put the brake on in the matter of
self-indulgence. He got into debt so long as a shred of credit remained
to him, and afterwards he tried to add to his resources by cards and
betting at races. He made and lost by turn,