One of the first operations in a man's toilet--I say it for the benefit of ladies, who cannot be supposed to know the mysteries thereof--is to shave himself; and an exceedingly disagreeable operation it is. I know not by what barbarous crotchet it has happened that men have tried to render their faces effeminate, by taking off an ornament and a distinction with which nature decorated them; but so it is, that men every morning doom themselves to a quarter of an hour's torture, for the express purpose of making their chins look smug, and as unlike the grown man of God's creation as possible. Dudley's beard was thick and black, and required a good deal of shaving. He therefore opened a very handsome dressing-case--it was one which had been a gift to him in his days of prosperity; and taking out a small finely-polished mirror, he fastened it--for the sake of more light than he could obtain at the looking-glass on the toilet-table--against the left-hand window of the room; then with a little Naples soap, brought by himself from the city of the syren, a soft badger's-hair brush and cold water--for he did not choose to ring the servants up at that early hour of the morning--he set to work upon as handsome a face as probably had ever been seen. The brush and the soap both being good, he produced a strong lather, notwithstanding the cold water; and turning to put down the brush and take up the razor, which he had laid down on a little table in the window, his eyes naturally fell upon that part of the park grounds beneath him, where the avenue terminated close to the house. As they did so, they rested upon a human figure passing rapidly from the mansion to the shade of the beech trees; and Dudley instantly recognised Edgar Adelon, the son of his host. There was nothing very extraordinary in the sight; but Dudley was a meditative man by habit, and while he reaped the sturdy harvest of his chin, he went on thinking of Edgar Adelon, his appearance, his character, his conversation; and then his mind turned from the youth to another subject, near which it had been fluttering a great deal both that morning and the night before, and settled upon Eda Brandon. Whatever was the course of his meditations, it produced a sigh, which is sometimes like a barrier across a dangerous road, giving warning not to proceed any further in that direction.