With such a nose a man might play the violoncello, marry for love, or even write poetry, and yet not go to the dogs.
Never would he stick in the mud so long as he followed that nose in the air.
By the help of that nose this gentleman wore a black velveteen jacket of foreign cut; a mustache and imperial (then much rarer in England than they have been since the Siege of Sebastopol); and yet left you perfectly convinced that he was an honest Englishman, who had not only no designs on your pocket, but would not be easily duped by any designs upon his own.
The companion of the personage thus sketched might be somewhere about seventeen; but his gait, his air, his lithe, vigorous frame, showed a manliness at variance with the boyish bloom of his face.

He struck the eye much more than his elder comrade.

Not that he was regularly handsome,--far from it; yet it is no paradox to say that he was beautiful, at least, few indeed were the women who would not have called him so.

His hair, long like his friend's, was of a dark chestnut, with gold gleaming through it where the sun fell, inclining to curl, and singularly soft and silken in its texture.

His large, clear, dark-blue, happy eyes were fringed with long ebon lashes, and set under brows which already wore the expression of intellectual power, and, better still, of frank courage and open loyalty.