this pleasurable deformity you are so studious to hide, but, by glossing it over, contrives to make you believe it appears as agreeable to him as to yourself. This man has your heart fully and wholly, and there is nothing you can deny him.
This was Mr. Gloss, who, however he came by it, had this art in the highest perfection, and knew so well how and upon whom to play his game, that he was ever sure of coming off winner.
Nor are the talents which form this character of necessity required to be very brilliant, though various and perspicuous. They are of the minor kind: a quickness of conception, a close observation on men and manners, some shrewdness, and a good memory comprising them all: to which indeed—but that would be a deduction in worthy matters—

must be indispensibly added, frontless impudence and a total want of feeling.
Any man with these in his possession, if he employ himself in nothing but this pursuit, will arrive to as great perfection in the noble art of playing upon mankind, as will raise him to that degree of consequence he may think proper.
These qualifications stood with Mr. Gloss in the place of Fortune, and with these he turned that fickle lady's wheel as he thought proper.
Will not the reader begin to feel uncomfortable when, in conformity to that veracity which all historians should critically keep in view, I am obliged to declare that this was the gentleman Mr. Standfast had in his eye as a husband for Annette.
Charles, Figgins, and Mr. Gloss were inseperable. The latter cut a prodigious figure. He had an elegant chariot, half a dozen footmen, and might have been taken for a newly arrived nabob. It was an extraordinary thing, however, that go where they would, though he was sure to run up a most expensive reckoning, he, by some carelessness or other, constantly left his purse at home, so that

he presently became indebted to Charles more than two hundred pounds in odds and ends of this kind.
This passed off as eccentricity, and as he had a most agreeable apparent indolence of mind, which, by the way, was what Kiddy would have called a copy of his countenance, he appeared to our hero the most delightful companion he had ever met with.
It was agreed that Charles, with Figgins as a companion, should, early in the spring, set out to make a tour of Europe, in which he ventured to express a very strong wish that Mr. Gloss would accompany him.
This however could not be.