s the very picture of good looks, good humour, and manly youth.
He had bright eyes with a sparkle and a dance to them, curly hair, a
charming smile, brilliant teeth, an admirable carriage of the head, the
look of a gentleman, the address of one accustomed to please at first
sight and to improve the impression. And with all these advantages, he
failed with every one about Hermiston; with the silent shepherd, with
the obsequious grieve, with the groom who was also the ploughman, with
the gardener and the gardener's sister--a pious, down-hearted woman with
a shawl over her ears--he failed equally and flatly. They did not like
him, and they showed it. The little maid, indeed, was an exception; she
admired him devoutly, probably dreamed of him in her private hours; but
she was accustomed to play the part of silent auditor to Kirstie's
tirades and silent recipient of Kirstie's buffets, and she had learned
not only to be a very capable girl of her years, but a very secret and
prudent one besides. Frank was thus conscious that he had one ally and
sympathiser in the midst of that general union of disfavour that
surrounded, watched, and waited on him in the house of Hermiston; but he
had little comfort or society from that alliance, and the demure little
maid (twelve on her last birthday) preserved her own counsel, and
tripped on his service, brisk, dumbly responsive, but inexorably
unconversational. For the others, they were beyond hope and beyond
endurance. Never had a young Apollo been cast among such rustic
barbarians. But perhaps the cause of his ill-success lay in one trait
which was habitual and unconscious with him, yet diagnostic of the man.
It was his practice to approach any one person at the expense of some
one else. He offered you an alliance against the some one else; he
flattered you by slighting him; you were drawn into a small intrigue
against him before you knew how. Wonderful are the virtues of this
process generally; but Frank's mistake was in the choice of the some one
else. He was not politic in that; he listened to the voice of
irritation. Archie had offended him at first by what he had felt to be
rather a dry reception, had offended him since by his frequent absences.
He was besides the one figure continually present in Frank's eye; and it
was to his immediate dependants that Frank could offer the snare of his
sympathy. Now the truth is that the Weirs, father and son, were
surrounded by a posse of strenuous