adjective drops us on a sickening descent.

The author dashed at his book, examined, approved, keenly enjoyed, and he
murderously scratched the adjective. She stood better without it, as a
bright planet star issuing from clouds, which are perhaps an adornment to
our hackneyed moon. This done, he restored the book to his coat's
breast-pocket, smiling or sneering at the rolls of bank-notes there,
disdaining to count them. They stuffed an inner waistcoat pocket and his
trousers also. They at any rate warranted that we can form a calculation
of the chances, let Lord Fleetwood rave as he may please.

Woodseer had caught a glimpse of the elbow-point of his coat when
flinging it back to the chair. There was distinctly abrasion.
Philosophers laugh at such things. But they must be the very ancient
pallium philosophers, ensconced in tubs, if they pretend to merriment
over the spectacle of nether garments gapped at the spot where man is
most vulnerable. He got loose from them and held them up to the candle,
and the rays were admitted, neither winking nor peeping. Serviceable old
clothes, no doubt. Time had not dealt them the final kick before they
scored a good record.

They dragged him, nevertheless, to a sort of confession of some weakness,
that he could not analyze for the swirl of emotional thoughts in the way;
and they had him to the ground. An eagle of the poetic becomes a mere
squat toad through one of these pretty material strokes. Where then is
Philosophy? But who can be philosopher and the fervent admirer of a
glorious lady? Ask again, who in that frowzy garb can presume to think of
her or stand within fifty miles of her orbit?

A dreary two hours brought round daylight. Woodseer quitted his restless
bed and entered the abjured habiliments, chivalrous enough to keep from
denouncing them until he could cast the bad skin they now were to his
uneasy sensations. He remembered having stumbled and fallen on the slope
of the hill into this vale, and probably then the mischief had occurred
though a brush would have, been sufficient, the slightest collision.
Only, it was odd that the accident should have come to pass just previous
to his introduction. How long antecedent was it? He belaboured his memory
to reckon how long it was from the moment of the fall to the first sight
of that lady.

His window looked down on the hotel stable-yard. A coach-house door was
open. Odd or not--and it certainly looked like fate--that he shoul