Their spirits partly succumbed to him by a process too lengthened to explain here.

Indeed, I dare do no more than hint at these mysteries of feminine emotion.

I beg you to believe that when we are dealing with that wonder, the human heart female, the part played by a tail-coat and a composed demeanour is not insignificant.
No doubt the ladies of Brookfield would have rebutted the idea of a tail-coat influencing them in any way as monstrous.

But why was it, when Mr.Pole again harped on his cook, in almost similar words, that they were drawn to meet the eyes of the stranger, on whom they printed one of the most fabulously faint fleeting looks imaginable, with a proportionately big meaning for him that might read it?
It must have been that this uniform of a tail had laid a basis of equality for the hour, otherwise they never would have done so; nor would he have enjoyed the chance of showing them that he could respond to the remotest mystic indications, with a muffled adroitness equal to their own, and so encouraged them to commence a language leading to intimacy with a rapidity that may well appear magical to the uninitiated.

In short, the man really had the language of the very elect of polite society.