His face was set in its grimmest lines.

He looked steadily at a certain spot in the fire, and went on.
"There are things," he said, "which troubled me little at the time, but which just lately have been on my mind.

The first is that I am nearly fifty, and Lady Angela is twenty-one.

The second is that I came home with all the tinsel and glamour of a popular hero.

Heaven knows I loathed it, but the fact remains.