irs, on cushions, squabs, "Prie-Dieu" and other drawing-room devices
of a like nature were some half-dozen men, whose air and bearing
pronounced them long habituated to all the usages of society. One stamp
of feature and style pervaded all; pale, dark-eyed, black-bearded,
and weary-looking, they seemed as though they were tired of a life of
dissipation, and yet utterly incapable of engaging in any other.

All born to high rank, some to large fortune, they found that no other
career was open to them except vice in one shape or other. The policy
of their rulers had excluded them from every road of honorable ambition;
neither as statesmen nor soldiers could they hope to win fame or glory.
Their habits of life and the tone of society gave no impulse to the
cultivation of science or literature. The topics discussed in their
circle never by chance adverted to a book; and there they were, with
heads whose development indicated all that was intellectual, with brows
and foreheads that betokened every gift of mental excellence, wearing
away life in the dullest imaginable routine of dissipation, their minds
neglected, their hearts corrupted, enervated in body, and deprived of
all energy of character; they wore, even in youth, the exhausted look of
age, and bore in every lineament of their features the type of lassitude
and discontent.

In the adjoining room sat Kate Dalton at a tea-table. She was costumed
for we cannot use any milder word in a species of "moyen-age" dress,
whose length of stomacher and deep-hanging sleeves recalled the
portraits of Titian's time; a small cap covered the back of her head,
through an aperture in which the hair appeared, its rich auburn masses
fastened by a short stiletto of gold, whose hilt and handle were studded
with precious stones; a massive gold chain, with a heavy cross of the
same metal, was the only ornament she wore. Widely different as was the
dress from that humble guise in which the reader first knew her, the
internal change was even greater still; no longer the bashful, blushing
girl, beaming with all the delight of a happy nature, credulous,
light-hearted, and buoyant, she was now composed in feature, calm, and
gentle-mannered; the placid smile that moved her lips, the graceful
motion of her head, her slightest gestures, her least words, all
displaying a polished ease and elegance which made even her beauty and
attraction secondary to the fascination of her manner. It is true the
gene