To give the devil his due, Roper was a handsome fellow. He stood upwards of six feet in his boots, had a splendid head of curling black hair, and a mustachio and whiskers to match. His nose was beautifully aquiline, his eyes of the darkest hazel, and a perpetual smile, which the puppy had cultivated from infancy, disclosed a box of brilliant dominoes. I knew Roper well, for I had twice bailed him out of the police-office, and, in return, he invited me to mess. Our obligations, therefore, to each other might be considered as nearly equal--in fact, the balance, if any, lay upon his side, as upon one occasion he had won from me rather more than fifty pounds at ecarté. He was not a bad fellow either, though a little slap-dash in his manner, and somewhat supercilious in his cups; on which occasions--and they were not unfrequent--he was by far too general in his denunciation of all classes of civilians. He was, I believe, the younger son of a Staffordshire baronet, of good connections, but no money--in fact, his patrimony was his commission, and he was notoriously on the outlook for an heiress. Now, Edith Bogle was rumoured to have twenty thousand pounds. Judge then of my disgust, when, on my return from a rent-gathering expedition to Argyllshire, I found Lieutenant Roper absolutely domiciled with the Bogles. I could not call there of a forenoon on my way from the Parliament-House, without finding the confounded dragoon seated on the sofa beside Edith, gabbling away with infinite fluency about the last ball, or the next review, or worsted-work, or some similar abomination. I question whether he had ever read a single book since he was at school, and yet there he sat, misquoting Byron to Edith--who was rather of a romantic turn--at no allowance, and making wild work with passages out of Tom Moore's Loves of the Angels. How the deuce he got hold of them, I am unable up to this day to fathom. I suspect he had somehow or other possessed himself of a copy of the "Beauties," and dedicated an hour each morning to committing extracts to memory. Certainly he never opened his mouth without enunciating some rubbish about bulbuls, gazelles, and chibouques; he designated Edith his Phingari, and swore roundly by the Koran and Kiebaubs. It was to me perfectly inconceivable how any woman of common intellect could listen to such egregious nonsense, and yet I could not disguise from myself the consciousness of the fact, that Miss Bogle rather liked it than otherwise.