onging to them were almost worshipped
at Wharton Hall. There had been marriages between the two families
certainly as far back as the time of Henry VII, and they were
accustomed to speak, if not of alliances, at any rate of friendships,
much anterior to that. As regards family, therefore, the pretensions
of a Fletcher would always be held to be good by a Wharton. But this
Fletcher was the very pearl of the Fletcher tribe. Though a younger
brother, he had a very pleasant little fortune of his own. Though
born to comfortable circumstances, he had worked so hard in his young
days as to have already made for himself a name at the bar. He was
a fair-haired, handsome fellow, with sharp, eager eyes, with an
aquiline nose, and just that shape of mouth and chin which such men
as Abel Wharton regarded as characteristic of good blood. He was
rather thin, about five feet ten in height, and had the character of
being one of the best horsemen in the county. He was one of the most
popular men in Herefordshire, and at Longbarns was almost as much
thought of as the squire himself. He certainly was not the man to be
taken, from his appearance, for a forlorn lover. He looked like one
of those happy sons of the gods who are born to success. No young
man of his age was more courted both by men and women. There was no
one who in his youth had suffered fewer troubles from those causes
of trouble which visit English young men,--occasional impecuniosity,
sternness of parents, native shyness, fear of ridicule, inability of
speech, and a general pervading sense of inferiority combined with
an ardent desire to rise to a feeling of conscious superiority. So
much had been done for him by nature that he was never called upon
to pretend to anything. Throughout the county those were the lucky
men,--and those too were the happy girls,--who were allowed to call
him Arthur. And yet this paragon was vainly in love with Emily
Wharton, who, in the way of love, would have nothing to say to him,
preferring,--as her father once said in his extremest wrath,--a
greasy Jew adventurer out of the gutter!

And now it had been thought expedient to have him down to Wharton,
although the lawyers' regular summer vacation had not yet commenced.
But there was some excuse made for this, over and above the emergency
of his own love, in the fact that his brother John, with Mrs.
Fletcher, was also to be at the Hall,--so that there was gathered
there a great family party of th