His good looks it had been hard for him to lose, they being such as were built of delicately cut features, graceful limbs, and an elegant air, but during the past year he had often enough looked haggard, vicious, and of desperate ill-humour, besides out of fashion, if not out at elbow. Now his look had singularly changed, his face was fresher, his eye brighter, though a little feverish in its light, and he wore a new sword and velvet scabbard, a rich lace steenkirk, and a modish coat of pale violet brocade.
"Where hast come from, Jack?" someone asked him. "Hast been into a nunnery?"
"Yes," he answered, "doing penance for thy sins, having none of my own."
"Hast got credit again, I swear," cried the other, "or thou wouldst not look such a dandy."
Sir John sate down and called for refreshment, which a drawer brought him.
"A man can always get credit," he said, with an ironic, cool little smile, "when his fortunes take a turn."
"Thou look'st as if thine had turned," said his companion. "Purple and silver, and thy ringlets brushed and perfumed like a girl's. In thy eyes 'tis a finer mop than any other man's French periwig, all know."
Sir John looked down on his shoulders at his soft rich fall of curls and smiled. "'Tis finer," he said. "'Tis as fine for a man as a certain beauty's, we once talked of, was for a woman."
The man who talked with him laughed with a half-sneer.
"Thou canst not forget her hair, Jack," he said, "but the lock stayed on her head despite thee. Art going to try again, now she is a widow?"