imes she was nothing but a shining vision from
another world. Those dark, splendid eyes; that lovely marblelike face;
those wavy ebon tresses; that exquisitely exquisite figure; yes, he felt
they were all a great deal too perfect for this imperfect and wicked
world. Sir Norman was in a very bad way, beyond doubt, but no worse than
millions of young men before and after him; and he heaved a great many
profound sighs, and drank a great many glasses of sack, and came to the
sorrowful conclusion that Dame Fortune was a malicious jade, inclined to
poke fun at his best affections, and make a shuttlecock of his heart
for the rest of his life. He thought, too, of Count L'Estrange; and the
longer he thought, the more he became convinced that he knew him well,
and had met him often. But where? He racked his brain until, between
love, Leoline, and the count, he got that delicate organ into such a
maze of bewilderment and distraction, that he felt he would be a case
of congestion, shortly, if he did not give it up. That the count's
voice was not the only thing about him assumed, he was positive; and he
mentally called over the muster-roll of his past friends, who spent half
their time at Whitehall, and the other half going through the streets,
making love to the honest citizens' pretty wives and daughters; but
none of them answered to Count L'Estrange. He could scarcely be a
foreigner--he spoke English with too perfect an accent to be that; and
then he knew him, Sir Norman, as if he had been his brother. In short,
there was no use driving himself insane trying to read so unreadable
a riddle; and inwardly consigning the mysterious count to Old Nick, he
swallowed another glass of sack, and quit thinking about him.

So absorbed had Sir Norman been in his own mournful musings, that he
paid no attention whatever to those around him, and had nearly forgotten
their very presence, when one of them, with a loud cry, sprang to
his feet, and then fell writhing to the floor. The others, in dismay,
gathered abut him, but the next instant fell back with a cry of, "He has
the plague!" At that dreaded announcement, half of them scampered off
incontinently; and the other half with the landlord at their head,
lifted the sufferer whose groans and cries were heart-rendering, and
carried him out of the house. Sir Norman, rather dismayed himself, had
risen to his feet, fully aroused from his reverie, and found himself
and another individual sole possesso