While he raged on in his fiery Italian way, Denzil, who saw no chance of staying the torrent of words, examined him at his leisure.
Ercole Ferruci was, as Diana had said, a singularly handsome man of thirty-five.

He was dark, slender, and tall, with dark, flashing eyes, a heavy black moustache, and an alert military look about him which showed that he had served in the army.

The above description savours a trifle of the impossible hero of a young lady's dream; and, as a matter of fact, Ferruci was not unlike that ideal personage.

He had all the looks and graces which women admire, and seemed honest and fiery enough in a manly way--the last person, as Lucian thought, to gain his aims by underhand ways, or to kill a helpless old man.

But Lucian, legally experienced in human frailty, was not to be put off with voluble conversation and outward graces.