gazed at others with a superb appealing eye, had made that difference
which lies between failure and success; he had never forgot one of the
occasions upon which the power of keeping silence under provocation or
temptation, the ability to control each feature and compel it to calm
sweetness, had served him as well as a regiment of soldiers might have
served him. Each such experience he had retained mentally for future
reference. Roxholm possessed this power to restrain himself, and to
keep silent, reflecting, and judging meanwhile, and was taller than he,
of greater grace, and unconscious state of bearing; his beauty of
countenance had but increased as he grew to manhood.

"I was the handsomest lad at Court in the year '65," his Grace of
Marlborough said once (he had been made Duke by this time). "The year
you were born I was the handsomest man in the army, they used to
say--but I was no such beauty and giant as you, Marquess. The gods were
_en veine_ when they planned you."

"When I was younger," said Roxholm, "it angered me to hear my looks
praised so much; I was boy enough to feel I must be unmanly. But
now--'tis but as it should be, that a man should have straight limbs
and a great body, and a clean-cut countenance. It should be nature--not
a thing to be remarked; it should be mere nature--and the other an
unnatural thing. 'Tis cruel that either man or woman should be weak or
uncomely. All should be as perfect parts of the great universe as are
the mountains and the sun."

"'Tis not so yet," remarked my Lord Marlborough, with his inscrutable
smile. "'Tis not so yet."

"Not yet," said Roxholm. "But let each creature live to make it so--men