Lean moreover and stiff, and with the air of having here and there in his person a bone or two more than his share, he had once or twice, at fancy-balls, been thought striking in a dress copied from one of Holbein's English portraits.

But when once some such meaning as that had been put into him it took a long time to put another, a longer time than even his extreme exposure or anybody's study of the problem had yet made possible.

If anything particular had finally been expected from him it might have been a summary or an explanation of the things he had always not said; but there was something in him that had long since pacified all impatience, drugged all curiosity.

He had never in his life answered such a question as his wife had just put him and which she would not have put had she feared a reply.

So dry and decent and even distinguished did he look, as if he had positively been created to meet a propriety and match some other piece, that lady, with her famous perceptions, would no more have appealed to him seriously on a general proposition than she would, for such a response, have rung the drawing-room bell.