means admitted light in proportion to their size, and what did penetrate
through them partook of the dark and gloomy tinge of the stained glass.

Tressilian and his guide had time enough to observe all these
particulars, for they waited some space in the apartment ere the present
master of the mansion at length made his appearance. Prepared as he was
to see an inauspicious and ill-looking person, the ugliness of Anthony
Foster considerably exceeded what Tressilian had anticipated. He was
of middle stature, built strongly, but so clumsily as to border on
deformity, and to give all his motions the ungainly awkwardness of a
left-legged and left-handed man. His hair, in arranging which men at
that time, as at present, were very nice and curious, instead of being
carefully cleaned and disposed into short curls, or else set up on end,
as is represented in old paintings, in a manner resembling that used by
fine gentlemen of our own day, escaped in sable negligence from under
a furred bonnet, and hung in elf-locks, which seemed strangers to
the comb, over his rugged brows, and around his very singular and
unprepossessing countenance. His keen, dark eyes were deep set beneath
broad and shaggy eyebrows, and as they were usually bent on the ground,
seemed as if they were themselves ashamed of the expression natural to
them, and were desirous to conceal it from the observation of men.
At times, however, when, more intent on observing others, he suddenly
raised them, and fixed them keenly on those with whom he conversed, they
seemed to express both the fiercer passions, and the power of mind which
could at will suppress or disguise the intensity of inward feeling.
The features which corresponded with these eyes and this form were
irregular, and marked so as to be indelibly fixed on the mind of him
who had once seen them. Upon the whole, as Tressilian could not help
acknowledging to himself, the Anthony Foster who now stood before them
was the last person, judging from personal appearance, upon whom one