Mrs Baggett had hardly read them all correctly. He was
shamefaced to such a degree that Mrs Baggett could not bring herself
to understand it. And there was present to him a manner of speech
which practice had now made habitual, but which he had originally
adopted with the object of hiding his shamefacedness under the veil
of a dashing manner. He would speak as though he were quite free
with his thoughts, when, at the moment, he feared that thoughts
should be read of which he certainly had no cause to be ashamed. His
fellowship, his poetry, and his early love were all, to his thinking,
causes of disgrace, which required to be buried deep within his own
memory. But the true humility with which he regarded them betokened a
character for which he need not have blushed. But that he thought of
those matters at all--that he thought of himself at all--was a matter
to be buried deep within his own bosom.

Through his short dark-brown hair the grey locks were beginning to
show themselves--signs indeed of age, but signs which were very
becoming to him. At fifty he was a much better-looking man than he
had been at thirty,--so that that foolish, fickle girl, Catherine
Bailey, would not have rejected him for the cruelly sensuous face
of Mr Compas, had the handsome iron-grey tinge been then given to
his countenance. He, as he looked at the glass, told himself that a
grey-haired old fool, such as he was, had no right to burden the life
of a young girl, simply because he found her in bread and meat. That
he should think himself good-looking, was to his nature impossible.
His eyes were rather small, but very bright; the eyebrows black and
almost bushy; his nose was well-formed and somewhat long, but not so
as to give that peculiar idea of length to his face which comes from
great nasal prolongation. His upper lip was short, and his mouth
large and manly. The strength of his character was better shown by
his mouth than by any other feature. He wore hardly any beard, as
beards go now,--unless indeed a whisker can be called a beard, which
came down, closely shorn, about half an inch below his ear. "A very
common sort of individual," he said of himself, as he looked in the
glass when Mary Lawrie had been already twelve months in the house;
"but then a man ought to be common. A man who is uncommon is either a
dandy or a buffoon."

His clothes were all made after one pattern and of one colour. He
had, indeed, his morning clothes and his eve