CHAPTER V.
I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp
and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without
affectation, audacious without impudence, learned without opinion,
and strange without heresy.--_Love's Labor Lost_.
L'Isle, meanwhile, after spending an unwonted time at his toilet, drew
himself up to the utmost of the five feet ten which nature had
allotted to him, to shake off the stoop which he imagined himself to
have contracted during his long hours of languor and suffering. He
then inspected himself most critically in the glass, to see how far he
had recovered his usual good looks. But that truthful counsellor
presented to him cheeks still sunken and pallid, and sharpened
features. The clear gray eye looked out from a cavern, and the rich
nut-brown hair hung over a brow covered with parchment. His lean
figure no longer filled the uniform which once fitted it so well. He
stood before his glass in no peacock mood of self-admiration; but was
compelled to own that he was not, just now at least, the man to
fascinate a lady's eye; so he resolved to take Lady Mabel by the ear,
which is, in fact, the surest way to catch a woman.
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