and forty; he had the well-groomed appearance of a flourishing City man, and presented no sinister physiognomy; one augured in him a disposition to high-feeding and a masculine self-assertiveness.  Faces such as his may be observed by the thousand round about the Royal Exchange; they almost invariably suggest degradation, more or less advanced, of a frank and hopeful type of English visage; one perceives the honest, hearty schoolboy, dimmed beneath self-indulgence, soul-hardening calculation, debasing excitement and vulgar routine.  Mr. Wrybolt was a widower, without children; his wife, a strenuous sportswoman, had been killed in riding to hounds two or three years ago.  This afternoon he showed a front all amiability.  He had come, he began by declaring, to let Mrs. Woolstan know that the son of a common friend of theirs had just, on his advice, been sent to the same school as Leonard; the boys would be friends, and make each other feel at home.  This news Mrs. Woolstan received with some modification of her aloofness; she was very glad; after all, perhaps it had been a wise thing to send Leonard off with little warning; she would only have made herself miserable in the anticipation of parting with him.  That, said Mr. Wrybolt, was exactly what he had himself felt.  He was quite sure that in a few days Mrs. Woolstan would see that all was for the best.  The fact of the matter was that Len’s tutor, though no doubt a very competent man, had been guilty of indiscretion in unsettling the boy’s ideas on certain very important subjects.  Well, admitted the mother, perhaps it was so; she would say no more; Mr. Wrybolt, as a man of the world, probably knew best.  And now—­as he was here, she would use the opportunity to speak to him on a subject which had often been in her mind of late.  It was a matter of business.  As her trustee was aware, she possessed a certain little capital which was entirely at her own disposal.  More than once Mr. Wrybolt had spoken to her about it—­had been so kind as to express a hope that she managed that part of her affairs wisely, and to offer his services if ever she desired to make any change in her investments.  The truth was, that she had thought recently of trying to put out her money to better advantage, and she would like to talk the matter over with him.  This they proceeded to do, Mr. Wrybolt all geniality and apt suggestiveness.  As the colloquy went on, a certain change appeared in the man’s look and voice; he visibly softened, he moved his chair a little nearer, and all at once, before Mrs. Woolstan had had time to reflect upon these symptoms, Wrybolt was holding her hand and making her an offer of marriage.