harm in profiting by the present
opportunity of "doing my-self well."

Such were my reflections on the way to Richmond in a hansom cab.
Richmond had struck us both as the best centre of operations in search
of the suburban retreat which Raffles wanted, and by road, in a
well-appointed, well-selected hansom, was certainly the most agreeable
way of getting there. In a week or ten days Raffles was to write to me
at the Richmond post-office, but for at least a week I should be "on my
own." It was not an unpleasant sensation as I leant back in the
comfortable hansom, and rather to one side, in order to have a good
look at myself in the bevelled mirror that is almost as great an
improvement in these vehicles as the rubber tires. Really I was not an
ill-looking youth, if one may call one's self such at the age of
thirty. I could lay no claim either to the striking cast of
countenance or to the peculiar charm of expression which made the face
of Raffles like no other in the world. But this very distinction was
in itself a danger, for its impression was indelible, whereas I might
still have been mistaken for a hundred other young fellows at large in
London. Incredible as it may appear to the moralists, I had sustained
no external hallmark by my term of imprisonment, and I am vain enough
to believe that the evil which I did had not a separate existence in my
face. This afternoon, indeed, I was struck by the purity of my fresh
complexion, and rather depressed by the general innocence of the
visage which peered into mine from the little mirror. My
straw-colored moustache, grown in the flat after a protracted holiday,
again preserved the most disappointing dimensions, and was still
invisible in certain lights without wax. So far from discerning the
desperate criminal who has "done time" once, and deserved it over and
over again, the superior but superficial observer might have imagined
that he detected a certain element of folly in my face.

At all events it was not the face to shut the doors of a first-class
hotel against me, without accidental evidence of a more explicit kind,
and it was with no little satisfaction that I directed the man to drive
to the Star and Garter. I also told him to go through Richmond Park,
though he warned me that it would add considerably to the distance and
his fare. It was autumn, and it struck me that the tints would be
fine. And I had learnt from Raffles to appreciate such things,