READER, how shall I limn this man for you, when the very sun has failed to do him justice—when the first photographers of the day have been driven baffled into their cameros obscuri! How account for the fearful impression that Vavasour Brabazon de Vere made on all women who crossed his path, ending but too often in the madhouse and the grave! And yet he stands before me now as he stood then, in that crowded assembly where he first met the Honourable Lady Velvetina Tresilian—lounging nonchalantly, as was ever his wont, against the faded wall-flowers of that exquisitely decorated salle de bal, breathing proud insolent defiance on one and all!
Few men could tell his age, nor his height, nor whither he came from, nor whence he went when he went away.... Wo, alas! to those who could! Few women knew the colour of his tawny eyes for the thick settled gloom that shrouded them like a pall; and those who did had long since expiated that fatal knowledge under slabs of moss-grown granite and pillars of broken marble, inscribed with a name, a date, and nothing more!.... Eyes full and heavily under-hung—bloodshot
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