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 eminently presentable among their own kind. He was robust, but by no means shapeless; his broad face retained enough comeliness for a middle-aged woman still to think of him without much self-deception as "handsome"; his hair was yet darker than it was gray; and there emanated from him, all in all, an expression of power and energy, of which even his severe young critic could not be wholly insensible.

Moreover, the critic could find no fault with the creature's excellently made evening clothes;—so far as mere appearances went, there was little reason for the most fastidious person to dread being thought a member of the Tinker party: Mrs. Tinker and her daughter were as knowingly dressed and coifed as any of the modish ladies on board, if one did not include the supremities of Mme. Momoro. Indeed, Miss Olivia Tinker, revealed by a cloth of gold evening gown, was so lovely in spite of her ever smouldering sullenness that any young man facing her across the small table might have been thought fortunate. This one was far from thinking himself so, however: for no matter how well they appeared to the eye, these people annoyed him even when they were silent, and when they opened their lips except to eat he felt himself perishing of their Midland way of speech.