But he had left the army, so that his reputation for gallantry mainly depended now on his fighting Liberalism in the House of Commons.

Even these facts, however, his aspect scantily matched; partly, no doubt, because he looked, as was usually said, un-English.

His black hair, cropped close, was lightly powdered with silver, and his dense glossy beard, that of an emir or a caliph, and grown for civil reasons, repeated its handsome colour and its somewhat foreign effect.

His nose had a strong and shapely arch, and the dark grey of his eyes was tinted with blue.

It had been said of him--in relation to these signs--that he would have struck you as a Jew had he not, in spite of his nose, struck you so much as an Irishman.
Neither responsibility could in fact have been fixed upon him, and just now, at all events, he was only a pleasant weather-washed wind-battered Briton, who brought in from a struggle with the elements that he appeared quite to have enjoyed a certain amount of unremoved mud and an unusual quantity of easy expression.