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How I came to loathe it. At first I hated it for his sake. Later, I loathed it for my own. Until I knew him for what, on his own showing, he was, it seemed such a dreadful pity, such a cruel shame, that so fine a tout-ensemble should be so disfigured.

It was almost as bad as a squint or a hare-lip.

Nevertheless, it was not very long before I recognized it for what it was--Nature's warning. For surely no one could hear that crétin laugh without pausing to consider whether Captain Bertie-Norton could be all that he claimed to be and appeared to be. If I obtrude this mannerism, or, rather, trait, upon your notice, it is because, more than anything else, it indicated the real man, and betrayed him.

Whenever it burst forth, incongruous and jarring, silly and fatuous, one knew that he was complacently regarding some past rascality or contemplating some future one; but, once again, not a piece of cunning and clever villainy that he had thought out for himself. Rather an opportunity that had occurred, arisen gratuitously in his path.