meet him. The earl's heavy travelling-carriage at length rolled
clattering up the court-yard; and in a few minutes a tall man, in the
prime of life, and borrowing some favourable effect as to person from the
large cloak of velvet and furs which hung round him, entered the room, and
Lady Erpingham embraced her son. The kind and familiar manner with which
he answered her inquiries and congratulations was somewhat changed when he
suddenly perceived Constance. Lord Erpingham was a cold man, and, like
most cold men, ashamed of the evidence of affection. He greeted Constance
very quietly; and, as she thought, slightly: but his eyes turned to her
far more often than any friend of Lord Erpingham's might ever have
remarked those large round hazel eyes turn to any one before.

When the earl withdrew to adjust his toilet for dinner, Lady Erpingham, as
she wiped her eyes, could not help exclaiming to Constance, "Is he not
handsome? What a figure!"

Constance was a little addicted to flattery where she liked the one who
was to be flattered, and she assented readily enough to the maternal
remark. Hitherto, however, she had not observed anything more in Lord
Erpingham than his height and his cloak: as he re-entered and led her to
the dining-room she took a better, though still but a casual, survey.

Lord Erpingham was that sort of person of whom _men_ always say, "What a
prodigiously fine fellow!" He was above six feet high, stout in
proportion: not, indeed, accurately formed, nor graceful in bearing, but
quite as much so as a man of six feet high need be. He had a manly
complexion of brown, yellow, and red. His whiskers were exceedingly
large, black, and well arranged. His eyes, as I have before said, were
round, large, and hazel; they were also unmeaning. His teeth were good;
and his nose, neither aquiline nor Grecian, was yet a very showy nose upon