severely, as if wearied by an admiration so universal that it
palled.

At this moment, Albert de Chantonnay entered the room. He was
enveloped in a long black cloak, which he threw off his shoulders
and cast over the back of a chair, not without an obvious
appreciation of its possibilities of the picturesque. He looked
round the room with a mild eye, which refused to lend itself to
mystery or a martial ruthlessness.

He was a young man with a very thin neck, and the whiskers, of which
his mother made complaint, were scarcely visible by the light of the
Abbe's candles.

"Good!" he said, in a thin tenor voice. "We are in time."

He came forward to the table, with long, nervous strides. He was
not exactly impressive, but his manner gave the assurance of a
distinct earnestness of purpose. The majority of us are
unfortunately situated toward the world, as regards personal
appearance. Many could pass for great if their physical proportions
were less mean. There are thousands of worthy and virtuous young
men who never receive their due in social life because they have red
hair or stand four-feet-six high, or happen to be the victim of an
inefficient dentist. The world, it would seem, does not want virtue
or solid worth. It prefers appearance to either. Albert de
Chantonnay would, for instance, have carried twice the weight in
Royalist councils if his neck had been thicker.

He nodded to the Abbe.