A few days later, when the horror of my new appearance was indeed a little mitigated by the falling off of the withered outer skin which had covered the right side of my face, I tried the effect of my striking physiognomy on Edgar.
Whether he had expected some such surprise, or whether he was endowed with a splendid insensibility to ugliness, he stood the shock with the most stolid placidity.
'Well?' said I defiantly, looking at him from out my ill-matched eyes in a passion of aggressive rage.
'Well?' said he, as complacently as if I had been a turnip.
'I hope you admire this style of beauty,' I hurled out savagely.
'I don't go quite so far as that, but it's really much better than I expected.'
'You are easily pleased.'
He went on quietly. 'The chief impression your countenance gives one now is not, as you flatter yourself, of consummate ugliness, but—forgive me—of consummate villainy.'
'What!'
'You are preserved for ever from the danger of being anything but strictly virtuous and straightforward in your dealings, for no one would trust the possessor of that countenance with either a secret or a sovereign.'