The Black Robe

The Black Robe is a classic mystery novel written by Wilkie Collins and first published in 1881. It may be that women have no positive appreciation of what is beautiful in form and color or it may be that they have no opinions of their own when the laws of fashion have spoken. This at least is certain, that not one of them in a thousand sees anything objectionable in the gloomy and hideous evening costume of a gentleman in the nineteenth century. A handsome man is, to their eyes, more seductive than ever in the contemptible black coat and the stiff white cravat.