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The table presented specimens of all the familiar characters of boarding-house life. There was the lawyer, sharp, observant, talkative, ready for a joke or an argument. There was the solemn man of business, who ate from a sense of duty, and scowled at the lawyer's bad puns. Near him, with an absurdly youthful wig and opaque goggles, sat the Unknown; his name, occupation, resources, and tastes alike a profound mystery. Several dapper clerks, whose right ears drooped from having been used as pen-racks, wearing stunning cravats, outré brooches and shirt-studs, learned in the lore of "two-forty" driving, were ranged opposite. Then there was the jolly widow, who was the admiration of men of her own age, but who cruelly gave all her smiles to the boys with newly-sprouting chins. Near her sat the fastidious man, whose nostrils curled ominously when any stain appeared on his napkin, or when anything sullied the virgin purity of his own exclusive fork. His spectacles seemed to serve as microscopes, made for the sole purpose of detecting some fatal speck invisible to other eyes. There was the singer, with a neck like a swan's, bowing with the gracious air that is acquired in the acknowledgment of bouquets and bravas. The artist was her vis-
Why shouldn't he lose his purple and fine linen as well as Jim his chances of happiness? Why shouldn't he lose his diamond shirt-studs, and his carriage and horses, as well as Joe his life?" "Well, he earned his money, I suppose," Andrew said, slowly, "and I suppose it's for him to say what he'll do with it." "Earned his money? He didn't earn his money," cried Nahum Beals.
Here's a receipted bill from Bar, LeDuc & Co., of Fifth Avenue, for $15,000 three rings, one diamond necklace, a ruby stick- pin, and a set of pearl shirt-studs." "Yes," said I, "but what is there suspicious about that? If the things are paid for " "Precisely," laughed Holmes. "They're paid for. Sir Henry Darlington has enough working capital to buy all the credit he needs with Messrs.
Bonner regarded that youth with a fondness at once parental and conjugal, and loved to lavish ornaments on his person, which already glittered with pins, rings, shirt-studs, and chains and seals, purchased at the good creature's expense. It was in the Strand that Mrs.
A florid apparel becomes some men, as simple raiment suits others, and Clive in his youth was of the ornamental class of mankind a customer to tailors, a wearer of handsome rings, shirt-studs, mustachios, long hair, and the like; nor could he help, in his costume or his nature, being picturesque and generous and splendid.
My little dandy Billy came in for another share of attention, and when I managed to button his jacket for him so that it showed his shirt-studs "like a man's," Count d'Orsay could not have felt a more pleasing sense of his sufficiency for all the demands of the gay world. When we reached the parlor we found Pa and Ma Lovegrove already receiving. About a score of guests had arrived.
There was something flash about his appearance, and his heavy double watch-chain and diamond shirt-studs gave him the look of an ephemeral adventurer. But he soon took his cue, the diamonds disappeared, and the dress was toned down.
Pathetically he announced that his sister was planning to marry him to a Mademoiselle Bonnard, god-daughter to King Louis-Philippe; but still no answer came. On the 1st of November, as he related to his Eve afterwards, he lost one of the two shirt-studs which Madame de Berny had given him, and which he wore alternately with another pair presented to him by Madame Hanska.
It was quite a light pocketful, but the jewellers in Paris could not match it without sending specially to Africa, so that Lord Castlenorman had to borrow bone shirt-studs. Not even rumour whispered the name of Nuth. Were I to say that this turned his head, there are those to whom the assertion would give pain, for his associates hold that his astute judgment was unaffected by circumstance.
And then there came the transaction with Lord Castlenorman at his Surrey residence. Nuth selected a Saturday night, for it chanced that Saturday was observed as Sabbath in the family of Lord Castlenorman, and by eleven o'clock the whole house was quiet. Five minutes before midnight Tommy Tonker, instructed by Mr. Nuth, who waited outside, came away with one pocketful of rings and shirt-studs.
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