st sense of the word, a gentleman.

My father had seen him, not on his visit of inquiry, but on a few
days after, bill-hook in hand, hacking away manfully at the briers and
brambles of the garden. My first view of him was in a position even
less romantic, assisting a Belford tradesman to put up a stove in the
nursery.

One of Mrs. Cameron's few causes of complaint in her country lodgings
had been the tendency to smoke in that important apartment. We all know
that when those two subtle essences, smoke and wind, once come to do
battle in a wide, open chimney, the invisible agent is pretty sure to
have the best of the day, and to drive his vapoury enemy at full speed
before him. M. Choynowski, who by this time had established a gardening
acquaintance, not merely with Bill and Martha, but with their fair
mistress, happening to see her, one windy evening, in a paroxysm of
smoky distress, not merely recommended a stove, after the fashion of the
northern nations' notions, but immediately walked into Belford to give
his own orders to a respectable ironmonger; and they were in the very
act of erecting this admirable accessary to warmth and comfort (really
these words are synonymous) when I happened to call.

I could hardly have seen him under circumstances better calculated
to display his intelligence, his delicacy, or his good-breeding. The
patience, gentleness, and kind feeling, with which he contrived at once
to excuse and to remedy certain blunders made by the workmen in the
execution of his orders, and the clearness with which, in perfectly
correct and idiomatic English, slightly tinged with a foreign accent, he
explained the mechanical and scientific reasons for the construction
he had suggested, gave evidence at once of no common talent, and of a
considerate-ness and good-nature in its exercise more valuable than all
the talent in the world. If trifling and every-day occurrences afford,
as I believe they do, the surest and safest indications of character, we
could have no hesitation in pronouncing upon the amiable qualities of M.
Choynowski.

In person he was tall and graceful, and very noble-looking. His head
was particularly intellectual, and there was a calm sweetness about the
mouth that was singularly prepossessing. Helen had likened him to a hero
of romance. In my eyes he bore much more plainly the stamp of a man of
fashion--of that very highest fashion which is too refined for finery,
too full of self-respect f