"I have lots of money, Arden, and I can talk to people, as you say," he suddenly said, as if Richard Arden had spoken but a moment before; "but, on the whole, is there on earth a more miserable dog than I? There are things that trouble me that would make you laugh; there are others that would, if I dare tell them, make you sigh. Soon I shall be able; soon you shall know all. I'm not a bad fellow. I know how to give away money, and, what is harder to bestow on others, my time and labour. But who to look at me would believe it? I'm not a worse fellow than Penruddock. I can cry for pity and do a kind act like him; but I look in my glass, and I also feel like him, 'the mark of Cain' is on me--cruelty in my face. Why should Nature write on some men's faces such libels on their characters? Then here's another thing to make you laugh--you, a handsome fellow, to whom beauty belongs, I say, by right of birth--it would make me laugh also if I were not, as I am, forced every hour I live to count up, in agonies of hope and terror, my chances in that enterprise in which all my happiness for life is staked so wildly. Common ugliness does not matter, it is got over. But such a face as mine! Come, come! you are too good-natured to say. I'm not asking for consolation; I am only summing up my curses."
"You make too much of these. Lady May thinks your face, she says, very interesting--upon my honour, she does."
"Oh, heaven!" exclaimed Mr. Longcluse, with a shrug and a laugh.
"And what is more to the purpose (will you forgive my reporting all this--you won't mind?), some young lady friends of hers who were by said, I assure you, that you had so much expression, and that your features were extremely refined."
"It won't do, Arden; you are too good-natured," said he, laughing more bitterly.
"I should much rather be as I am, if I were you, than be gifted with vulgar beauty--plump, pink and white, with black beady eyes, and all that," said Arden.
"But the heaviest curse upon me is that which, perhaps, you do not suspect--the curse of--secrecy."
"Oh, really!" said Arden, laughing, as if he had thought up to then that Mr. Longcluse's history was as well known as that of the ex-Emperor Napoleon.
"I don't say that I shall come out like the enchanted hero in a fairy tale, and change in a moment from a beast into a prince; but I am something better than I seem. In a short time, if you cared to be bored with it, I shall have a great deal to tell you."
