bull-headed gentleman, in a gray surtout and a black wig, mingled with
the various voices of the motley group the gentle phrases of
Hockley-in-the-Hole, from which place of polite merriment he came
charged with a message of invitation. While such were the inmates of
the anteroom, what picture shall we draw of the /salon/ and its
occupant?

A table was covered with books, a couple of fencing foils, a woman's
mask, and a profusion of letters; a scarlet cloak, richly laced, hung
over, trailing on the ground. Upon a slab of marble lay a hat, looped
with diamonds, a sword, and a lady's lute. Extended upon a sofa,
loosely robed in a dressing-gown of black velvet, his shirt collar
unbuttoned, his stockings ungartered, his own hair (undressed and
released for a brief interval from the false locks universally worn)
waving from his forehead in short yet dishevelled curls, his whole
appearance stamped with the morning negligence which usually follows
midnight dissipation, lay a young man of about nineteen years. His
features were neither handsome nor ill-favoured, and his stature was
small, slight, and somewhat insignificant, but not, perhaps, ill-formed
either for active enterprise or for muscular effort. Such, reader, is
the picture of the young prodigal who occupied the apartments I have
described, and such (though somewhat flattered by partiality) is a
portrait of Morton Devereux, six months after his arrival in town.

The door was suddenly thrown open with that unhesitating rudeness by
which our friends think it necessary to signify the extent of their
familiarity; and a young man of about eight-and-twenty, richly dressed,
and of a countenance in which a dissipated /nonchalance/ and an
aristocratic /hauteur/ seemed to struggle for mastery, abruptly entered.