d. In the
family, therefore, he had the _entree_ of a son, and had enjoyed the
opportunity of seeing Rose with a freedom and frequency that soon
placed them on the footing of old acquaintanceship. Rose was an easy
person to become acquainted with in an ordinary and superficial
manner. She was like those pellucid waters whose great clearness
deceives the eye as to their depth. Her manners had an easy and
gracious frankness; and she spoke right on, with an apparent
simplicity and fearlessness that produced at first the impression that
you knew all her heart. A longer acquaintance, however, developed
depths of reserved thought and feeling far beyond what at first
appeared.

Harry, at first, had met her only on those superficial grounds of
banter and _badinage_ where a gay young gentleman and a gay young lady
may reconnoitre, before either side gives the other the smallest peep
of the key of what Dr. Holmes calls the side-door of their hearts.

Harry, to say the truth, was in a bad way when he first knew Rose:
he was restless, reckless, bitter. Turned loose into society with an
ample fortune and nothing to do, he was in danger, according to the
homely couplet of Dr. Watts, of being provided with employment by that
undescribable personage who makes it his business to look after idle
hands.

Rose had attracted him first by her beauty, all the more attractive to
him because in a style entirely different from that which hitherto had
captivated his imagination. Rose was tall, well-knit, and graceful,
and bore herself with a sort of slender but majestic lightness, like
a meadow-lily. Her well-shaped, classical head was set finely on
her graceful neck, and she had a stag-like way of carrying it, that
impressed a stranger sometimes as haughty; but Rose could not help
that, it was a trick of nature. Her hair was of the glossiest black,
her skin fair as marble, her nose a little, nicely-turned aquiline
affair, her eyes of a deep violet blue and shadowed by long dark
lashes, her mouth a little larger than the classical proportion, but
generous in smiles and laughs which revealed perfect teeth of dazzling
whiteness. There, gentlemen and ladies, is Rose Ferguson's picture:
and, if you add to all this the most attractive impulsiveness and
self-unconsciousness, you will not wonder that Harry Endicott at first
found himself admiring her, and fancied driving out with her in the
park; and that when admiring eyes followed them both, as a