which seemed to betoken much suffering--

"My kind mistress, will you and these other ladies excuse my presenting
myself at such an hour and in such a costume? I am ill, and I was
obliged to get up."

His costume was certainly singular enough: he was wrapped in a large
dressing-gown of flowered chintz; his head was adorned by a nightcap
drawn up at the top and surmounted by a muslin frill. His appearance did
not contradict his complaint of illness; he was barely four feet six in
height, his limbs were bony, his face sharp, thin, and pale. Thus
attired, coughing incessantly, dragging his feet as if he had no strength
to lift them, holding a lighted candle in one hand and an egg in the
other, he suggested a caricature-some imaginary invalid just escaped from
M. Purgon. Nevertheless, no one ventured to smile, notwithstanding his
valetudinarian appearance and his air of affected humility. The
perpetual blinking of the yellow eyelids which fell over the round and
hollow eyes, shining with a sombre fire which he could never entirely
suppress, reminded one of a bird of prey unable to face the light, and
the lines of his face, the hooked nose, and the thin, constantly
quivering, drawn-in lips suggested a mixture of boldness and baseness, of
cunning and sincerity. But there is no book which can instruct one to
read the human countenance correctly; and some special circumstance must
have roused the suspicions of these four persons so much as to cause them
to make these observations, and they were not as usual deceived by the
humbug of this skilled actor, a past master in the art of deception.

He continued after a moment's silence, as if he did not wish to interrupt
their mute observation--