But when people fancied from this look of his that he was an
empty-headed fop they soon found themselves immensely mistaken.

He was thirty-eight, but looked a gilded youth of twenty; and _was_
sufficiently gilded (as he said), not perhaps exactly to be
comfortable, but to enable him to get about comfortably, and see those
who were.

He had a number of relatives in high places, who bored him, and were
always trying to get him married. He had taken up various occupations
and travelled a good deal. But his greatest pleasure was the study of
people. There was nothing cold in his observation, nothing of the
cynical analyst. He was impulsive, though very quiet, immensely and
ardently sympathetic and almost too impressionable and enthusiastic. It
was not surprising that he was immensely popular generally, as well as
specially; he was so interested in everyone except himself.

No-one was ever a greater general favourite. There seemed to be no type
of person on whom he jarred. People who disagreed on every other
subject agreed in liking Vincy.

But he did not care in the least for acquaintances, and spent much
ingenuity in trying to avoid them; he only liked intimate friends, and
of all he had perhaps the Ottleys were his greatest favourites.

His affection for them dated from a summer they had spent in the same
hotel in France. He had become extraordinarily interested in them. He
delighted in Bruce, but had with Edith, of course, more mutual
understanding and intellectual sympathy, and though they met
constantly, his friendship with her had never been misunderstood.