But how to incur this cost was a difficult question altogether.

So, puffing, gazing into the fire, and knitting his brows, he sat and thought.
As a good-looking young man, as a well-dressed young man, as an educated and cultured man, as a man of the clubs, and of society, and, when occasion required, as a very sensible man of business, Mr Croft might be looked upon as essentially a commonplace personage, and in our walks abroad we meet a great many like him.

But there dwelt within him a certain disposition, which, at times, removed him to quite a distance from the arena in which commonplace people go through their prescribed performances.

He would come to a determination, generally quite suddenly, to attain a desired end in his own way, without any reference to traditionary or conventional methods; and the more original and startling these plans the better he liked it.
This disposition it was which made Lawrence read with so much interest the account of the defeated general who made the cavalry charge into the camp of his victorious enemy.

Defeat had been his, all through his short campaign, and it now seemed that the time had come to make another bold effort to get the better of his bad luck.