Nature had sent him into the world with an armful of good gifts.

He was very good-looking--tall, dark, agile, perfectly finished, so good-looking that he might have been a fool and yet be forgiven.

As has already been intimated, however, he was far from being a fool.

He had a number of talents, which, during three or four years that followed his leaving college, had received the discipline of the study of the law.

He had not made much of the law; but he had made something of his talents.