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the folds of the garment with a bitter smile) for any farther evidence
of your skill. Indeed, we have had enough. You will see the necessity,
I hope, of quitting Oxford--at all events, of quitting instantly my
chambers."
Abased, humbled to the dust as I then was, it is probable that I should
have resented this galling language by immediate personal violence, had
not my whole attention been at the moment arrested by a fact of the
most startling character. The cloak which I had worn was of a rare
description of fur; how rare, how extravagantly costly, I shall not
venture to say. Its fashion, too, was of my own fantastic invention; for
I was fastidious to an absurd degree of coxcombry, in matters of this
frivolous nature. When, therefore, Mr. Preston reached me that which
he had picked up upon the floor, and near the folding doors of the
apartment, it was with an astonishment nearly bordering upon terror,
that I perceived my own already hanging on my arm, (where I had no doubt
unwittingly placed it,) and that the one presented me was but its exact
counterpart in every, in even the minutest possible particular. The
singular being who had so disastrously exposed me, had been muffled,
I remembered, in a cloak; and none had been worn at all by any of
the members of our party with the exception of myself. Retaining some
presence of mind, I took the one offered me by Preston; placed it,
unnoticed, over my own; left the apartment with a resolute scowl of
defiance; and, next morning ere dawn of day, commenced a hurried journey
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