mind had a singular purity and rectitude; he was a scrupulously just
person so far as he knew. He had traits that would have fitted him very
well for the career he had once contemplated, and he had even made some
preliminary studies for the ministry. But the very generosity of his
creed perplexed him, his mislikers said; contending that he could never
have got on with the mob of the redeemed. "Arbuton," said a fat young
fellow, the supposed wit of the class, "thinks there _are_ persons of
low extraction in heaven; but he doesn't like the idea." And Mr. Arbuton
did not like the speaker very well, either, nor any of his poorer
fellow-students, whose gloveless and unfashionable poverty, and meagre
board and lodgings, and general hungry dependence upon pious bequests
and neighborhood kindnesses, offended his instincts. "So he's given it
up, has he?" moralized the same wit, upon his retirement. "If Arbuton
could have been a divinely commissioned apostle to the best society, and
been obliged to save none but well-connected, old-established, and
cultivated souls, he might have gone into the ministry." This was a
coarse construction of the truth, but it was not altogether a
perversion. It was long ago that he had abandoned the thought of the
ministry, and he had since travelled, and read law, and become a man of
society and of clubs; but he still kept the traits that had seemed to
make his vocation clear. On the other hand he kept the prejudices that
were imagined to have disqualified him. He was an exclusive by training
and by instinct. He gave ordinary humanity credit for a certain measure
of sensibility, and it is possible that if he had known more kinds of
men, he would have recognized merits and excellences which did not now
exist for him; but I do not think he would have liked them. His doubt of
these Western people was the most natural, if not the most justifiable
thing in the world, and for Kitty, if he could have known all about her,
I do not see how he could have believed in her at all. As it was, he
went in search of her party, when he had smoked his cigar, and found