He was my first actual vision
of that awful and distant world of fashion, of whose splendours I had
already read something in the three-volumed gospel of the circulating
library.
Handsome, elegant, with features almost feminine, and soft, wavy, black
hair, whiskers and moustache, he was altogether such a knight as I had
never beheld, or even fancied, at Knowl--a hero of another species, and
from the region of the demigods. I did not then perceive that coldness of
the eye, and cruel curl of the voluptuous lip--only a suspicion, yet enough
to indicate the profligate man, and savouring of death unto death.
But I was young, and had not yet the direful knowledge of good and evil
that comes with years; and he was so very handsome, and talked in a way
that was so new to me, and was so much more charming than the well-bred
converse of the humdrum county families with whom I had occasionally
sojourned for a week at a time.
It came out incidentally that his leave of absence was to expire the
day after to-morrow. A Lilliputian pang of disappointment followed this
announcement. Already I was sorry to lose him.
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