He had aged considerably.
Men like him have a way of falling into their manhood all at once.

His hair was even a little thin on top--with that and his lean, hatchet face he might have been thirty-five.
Afterwards in the drawing-room he was one of those who stood nearest to Sir Michael.

Some of the others laughed at him, calling him Don Quixote, and she heard Sir Michael say that the young man's theories were those of the Gironde.

"The Revolution devours her own children," he said, with his fine old ironic smile.

"And a good many of us have to eat our own professions before we're forty.