Page:Vivian Grey, Volume 2.djvu/122

 crest is a bubble, and really the effect produced by it is most ludicrous.

"I was very much struck at table, by the appearance of an individual who came in very late, but who was evidently, by his bearing, no insignificant personage. He was a tall man, with a long hooked nose, and high cheek bones, and with an eye—(were you ever at the Old Bailey? there you may see its fellow); his complexion looked as if it had been accustomed to the breezes of many climes, and his hair, which had once been red, was now silvered, or rather iron-greyed, not by age. Yet there was in his whole bearing, in his slightest actions, even in the easy, desperate, air with which he took a glass of wine, an indefinable—something, (you know what I mean,) which attracted your unremitting attention to him. I was not wrong in my suspicions of his celebrity; for, as Miss Premium, whom I sat next to, (eh! Grey, my boy, how are you? ' 'tis a very fine thing for a