Mrs Trevelyan had described Colonel Osborne truly as far as words went, in saying that he had known her since she was a baby, and that he was an older man than her father.  Colonel Osborne’s age exceeded her father’s by about a month, and as he was now past fifty, he might be considered perhaps, in that respect, to be a safe friend for a young married woman.  But he was in every respect a man very different from Sir Marmaduke.  Sir Marmaduke, blessed and at the same time burdened as he was with a wife and eight daughters, and condemned as he had been to pass a large portion of his life within the tropics, had become at fifty what many people call quite a middle-aged man.  That is to say, he was one from whom the effervescence and elasticity and salt of youth had altogether passed away.  He was fat and slow, thinking much of his wife and eight daughters, thinking much also of his dinner.  Now Colonel Osborne was a bachelor, with no burdens but those imposed upon him by his position as a member of Parliament, a man of fortune to whom the world had been very easy.  It was not therefore said so decidedly of him as of Sir Marmaduke, that he was a middle-aged man, although he had probably already lived more than two-thirds of his life.  And he was a good-looking man of his age, bald indeed at the top of his head, and with a considerable sprinkling of grey hair through his bushy beard; but upright in his carriage, active, and quick in his step, who dressed well, and was clearly determined to make the most he could of what remained to him of the advantages of youth.  Colonel Osborne was always so dressed that no one ever observed the nature of his garments, being no doubt well aware that no man after twenty-five can afford to call special attention to his coat, his hat, his cravat, or his trousers; but nevertheless the matter was one to which he paid much attention, and he was by no means lax in ascertaining what his tailor did for him.  He always rode a pretty horse, and mounted his groom on one at any rate as pretty.  He was known to have an excellent stud down in the shires, and had the reputation of going well with hounds.  Poor Sir Marmaduke could not have ridden a hunt to save either his government or his credit.  When, therefore, Mrs Trevelyan declared to her sister that Colonel Osborne was a man whom she was entitled to regard with semi-parental feelings of veneration because he was older than her father, she made a comparison which was more true in the letter than in the spirit.  And when she asserted that Colonel Osborne had known her since she was a baby, she fell again into the same mistake.  Colonel Osborne had indeed known her when she was a baby, and had in old days been the very intimate friend of her father; but of herself he had seen little or nothing since those baby days, till he had met her just as she was about to become Mrs Trevelyan; and though it was natural that so old a friend should come to her and congratulate her and renew his friendship, nevertheless it was not true