The servant excused himself on account of the stranger's pressing and determined manner, motives which did not in the least reconcile the peer to his admission; but, without any further appearance of distrust, he walked with slow and stately steps to the library, and throwing open the door advanced towards a table, determined not to afford his unwished-for guest a pretext for sitting down by even approaching a chair himself. The stranger's person merits some slight description, and even a more detailed account of his clothing than is required on ordinary occasions. He was a man perhaps four or five years younger than the peer himself, thin, light, active, with a twinkling gray eye, somewhat too full of moisture, and a number of those long radiating wrinkles which, I believe, are called crows' feet, decorating the corners of the eyelids. His general complexion was white, of that dry and somewhat withered appearance which long habits of dissipation leave behind, when dissipation is not combined with drunkenness. In every glance there was a quick, sharp, prying expression, joined to a somewhat subservient smile, which was strangely enough displayed upon a cast of countenance, the natural expression of which was pertinacious effrontery. His dress was well worn, and had not apparently been formed originally of any very costly materials; but it had withal a smart cut, and a smart look, which prevented the eye from detecting either the long services it had rendered, or the coarseness of the stuff. It was of a rather anomalous description, too, consisting of what was then called a marone frock with a silver lace, a pair of buckskin breeches for riding in, thunder and lightning silk stockings, just showing their junction with the breeches above, and a pair of heavy boots; while ruffles, and a frill of that species of lace which, seeming all darns together, admits the most frequently of being mended, decorated his wrists and his bosom. Lord Dewry gazed at him as he rose from the chair in which he had been sitting with a look which, if it did not absolutely express the stare of utter strangeness, had very few signs of recognition in it. But the other was neither to be abashed nor discomposed; and his manners, which were those of a gentleman, softened down a good deal of the effrontery which his demeanour displayed. Had he not been a gentleman, and in the habit of mingling with gentlemen, his determined impudence would have been insufferable; and even as things were, that impudence, together with a certain affected swagger in tone and language, which was very generally assumed by the puppies of the day, and which the visiter caricatured, were quite sufficiently annoying, especially to such a man as Lord Dewry. Conceiving at once that the peer was not peculiarly delighted with his visit, the stranger advanced round the table, and with a low bow addressed him ere he had time to speak.