_BEFORE AND AFTER BREAKFAST_ Next morning early I visited my favourite full-length portrait in the chocolate coat and top-boots.

Scanty as had been my cousin Monica's notes upon this dark and eccentric biography, they were everything to me.

A soul had entered that enchanted form.

Truth had passed by with her torch, and a sad light shone for a moment on that enigmatic face.
There stood the _roue_--the duellist--and, with all his faults, the hero too! In that dark large eye lurked the profound and fiery enthusiasm of his ill-starred passion.

In the thin but exquisite lip I read the courage of the paladin, who would have 'fought his way,' though single-handed, against all the magnates of his county, and by ordeal of battle have purged the honour of the Ruthyns.