was, very distinct and very lovely, and always hung on the line in his
mental picture-gallery. It was positively with trepidation that he
presented himself before her very soon after his arrival; and an
undeniable blush "mantled" his cheek--if a blush can be said with any
propriety to mantle the male cheek--- when he marched into the
drawing-room, where she was doing a dainty bit of embroidery, and with
much simplicity and directness said, "You said I might come, you know,
and I have come; and I begged of Ethel to come too, but she could not
leave my aunt," before he had so much as shaken hands. Of course no
well-regulated and well-bred young woman--and Miss Bascombe was
both--ever permits herself to remember any man until she is engaged to
him; but she need not forget one that has impressed her agreeably. Miss
Bascombe had not forgotten the handsome Englishman she had met at Jenny
De Witt's, nor the little lecture she had given him on the duties of
brothers to sisters, and it did not strike her that his inaugural
address was at all eccentric or mysterious. He had been told what he
ought to do; he had tried to do it, as was quite right and proper. He
deserved some reward. And he got it,--though only as an encouragement to
abstract virtue, of course. The young lady was pleased to be friendly,
gracious, charming. Her mother came in presently, was equally friendly
and gracious, and almost as charming. Her father came home to dinner,
and was friendly too, and hearty, and very hospitable. Her brothers were
friendliest of all. He knew quite well that he had no claim on them,
that he had not saved the life of any member of the family or laid them
under any sort of obligation, individually or collectively, and no
reception could have seemed more special and dangerously cordial, yet no
anxieties oppressed, no fears distracted him. The weight of excessive
eligibility suddenly slipped off him, like the albatross from the neck
of the Ancient Mariner, leaving him a thankful and a happy man, and in
a week he had established himself firmly at the Bascombes', declined to