the new groom when he first entered our service. Two old friends
of the General accompanied me at his special request, and
reported the man to be perfectly competent and trustworthy. After
that, Michael rode out with me alone; my friends among young
ladies seldom caring to accompany me, when I abandoned the park
for the quiet country roads on the north and west of London. Was
it wrong in me to talk to him on these expeditions? It would
surely have been treating a man like a brute never to take the
smallest notice of him--especially as his conduct was uniformly
respectful toward me. Not once, by word or look, did he presume
on the position which my favor permitted him to occupy.

Ought I to blush when I confess (though he was only a groom) that
he interested me?

In the first place, there was something romantic in the very
blankness of the story of his life.

He had been left, in his infancy, in the stables of a gentleman
living in Kent, near the highroad between Gravesend and
Rochester. The same day, the stable-boy had met a woman running
out of the yard, pursued by the dog. She was a stranger, and was
not well-dressed. While the boy was protecting her by chaining
the dog to his kennel, she was quick enough to place herself
beyond the reach of pursuit.

The infant's clothing proved, on examination, to be of the finest
linen. He was warmly wrapped in a beautiful shawl of some foreign
manufacture, entirely unknown to all the persons present,
including the master and mistress of the house. Among the folds