Altogether he was a decided hero in the place, and though people
really knew very little about him, the less they knew the more they
gossiped, holding him up to the rising generation as a modern Dick
Whittington, and reverencing him extremely as one who had shed glory
on his native town. Even Elizabeth had conceived a great idea of Mr.
Ascott. When she saw this little fat man, coarse and common looking
in spite of his good clothes and diamond ring, and in manner a
curious mixture of pomposity and awkwardness, she laughed to herself,
thinking what a very uninteresting individual it was about whom
Stowbury had told so many interesting stories. However, she went up
to inform Miss Selina, and prevent her making her appearance before
him in the usual Sunday dishabille in which she indulged when no
visitors were expected.

After his first awkwardness, Mr. Peter Ascott became quite at his
ease with Miss Leaf. He began to talk--not of Stowbury, that was
tacitly ignored by both--but of London, and then of "my house in
Russell Square," "my carriage," "my servants"--the inconvenience of
keeping coachmen who would drink, and footmen who would not clean the
plate properly; ending by what was a favorite moral axiom of his,
that "wealth and position are heavy responsibilities."

He himself seemed, however, not to have been quite overwhelmed by
them; he was fat and flourishing--with an acuteness and power in the
upper half of his face which accounted for his having attained his
present position. The lower half, somehow Miss Leaf did not like it,
she hardly knew why, though a physiognomist might have known. For
Peter Ascott had the underhanging, obstinate, sensual lip, the large
throat--bull-necked, as it has been called--indications of that