and upon his coat collar, it was perfectly white, frizzed
out a little at the sides, and gathered into a bag behind. The stranger
rose and bowed as Puddock approached the lady, and the lieutenant had a
nearer view of his great white forehead--his only good feature--and the
pair of silver spectacles that glimmered under it, and his small hooked
nose and stern mouth.

''Tis a mean countenance,' said the general, talking him over when the
company had dispersed.

'No countenance,' said Miss Becky decisively, '_could_ be mean with such
a forehead.'

The fact is--if they had cared to analyse--the features, taken
separately, with that one exception, were insignificant; but the face
was singular, with its strange pallor, its intellectual mastery, and
sarcastic decision.

The general, who had accidentally omitted the ceremony--in those days
essential--now strutted up to introduce them.

'Mr. Dangerfield, will you permit me to present my good friend and
officer Lieutenant Puddock. Lieutenant Puddock, Mr Dangerfield--Mr.
Dangerfield, Lieutenant Puddock.'

And there was a great deal of pretty bowing, and each was the other's
'most obedient,' and declared himself honoured; and the conventional
parenthesis ended, things returned to their former course.

Puddock only perceived that Mrs. Sturk was giving Dangerfield a rambling
sort of account of the people of Chapelizod. Dangerfield, to do him
justice, listened attentively. In fact, he had led her upon that
particular theme, and as easily and cleverly kept her close to the
subject. For he was not a general to manoeuvre without knowing first
how the ground lay, and had an active, enquiring mind, in which he made
all sorts of little notes.

So Mrs. Sturk prattled on, to her own and Mr. Dangerfield's content, for
she was garrulous when not under the eye of her lord, and always gentle,
though given to lamentation, having commonly many small hardships to
mention. So, quite without malice or retention, she poured out the
gossip of the town, but not its scandal. Indeed, she was a very
harmless, and rather sweet, though dolorous little body, and was very
fond of children, especially her own, who would have been ruined were it
not that they quailed as much as she did before Sturk, on whom she
looked as by far the cleverest and most awful mortal then extant, and
never doubted that the world thought so too. For the rest, she preserved
her dresses, which were not amiss, for an interminab