amusing mixture of strut, humility,
roguery and cleverness. He is waiting all this time in the drawing-
room, and you had better see him, as he may, now, be almost
considered part of the family. You know he has been living in the
house at Templeton, ever since he was installed by Mr. John
Effingham. It was there I had the honour first to meet him,"

"First!--Surely you have never seen him any where else!"

"Your pardon, my dear. He never comes to town without honouring me
with a call. This is the price I pay for having had the honour of
being an inmate of the same house with him for a week."

Eve rang the bell, and Pierre made his appearance.

"Desire Mr. Bragg to walk into the library."

Grace looked demure while Pierre was gone to usher in their visiter,
and Eve was thinking of the medley of qualities John Effingham had
assembled in his description, as the door opened, and the subject of
her contemplation entered.

"_Monsieur Aristabule_" said Pierre, eyeing the card, but sticking at
the first name.

Mr. Aristabulus Bragg was advancing with an easy assurance to make
his bow to the ladies, when the more finished air and quiet dignity
of Miss Effingham, who was standing, so far disconcerted him, as
completely to upset his self-possession. As Grace had expressed it,
in consequence of having lived three years in the old residence at
Templeton, he had begun to consider himself a part of the family, and
at home he never spoke of the young lady without calling her "Eve,"
or "Eve Effingham." But he found it a very different thing to affect
familiarity among his associates, and to practise it in the very face
of its subject; and, although seldom at a loss for words of some sort
or another, he was now actually dumb-founded. Eve relieved his
awkwardness by directing Pierre, with her eye, to hand a chair, and
first speaking.

"I regret that my father is not in," she said, by way of turning the
visit from herself; "but he is to be expected every moment. Are you
lately from Templeton?"

Aristabulus drew his breath, and recovered enough of his ordinary
tone of manner to reply with a decent regard to his character for
self-command. The intimacy that he had intended to establish on the
spot, was temporarily defeated, it is true, and without his exactly
knowing how it had been effected; for it was merely the steadiness of
the young lady, blended as it was with a polished reserve, that had
thrown him to a distance he could n