his dandy days. Sir Peter, originally very thin and with fair locks
and dreamy blue eyes, had now become rather portly,--at least towards
the middle of him,--and very gray; had long ago taken to spectacles;
his dress, too, was very old-fashioned, and made by a country tailor.
He looked quite as much a gentleman as Travers did; quite perhaps as
healthy, allowing for difference of years; quite as likely to last his
time. But between them there was the difference of the nervous
temperament and the lymphatic. Travers, with less brain than Sir
Peter, had kept his brain constantly active; Sir Peter had allowed his
brain to dawdle over old books and lazily delight in letting the hours
slip by. Therefore Travers still looked young, alert,--up to his day,
up to anything; while Sir Peter, entering that drawing-room, seemed a
sort of Rip van Winkle who had slept through the past generation, and
looked on the present with eyes yet drowsy. Still, in those rare
moments when he was thoroughly roused up, there would have been found
in Sir Peter a glow of heart, nay, even a vigour of thought, much more
expressive than the constitutional alertness that characterized
Leopold Travers, of the attributes we most love and admire in the
young.

"My dear Sir Peter, is it you? I am so glad to see you again," said
Travers. "What an age since we met, and how condescendingly kind you
were then to me; silly fop that I was! But bygones are bygones; come
to the present. Let me introduce to you, first, my valued friend,
Mrs. Campion, whose distinguished husband you remember. Ah, what
pleasant meetings we had at his house! And next, that young lady of
whom she takes motherly charge, my daughter Cecilia. Lady Glenalvon,
your wife's friend, of course needs no introduction: time stands still
with her."