admiration for his high gifts of intellect. Well, up to this, it is his
cleverness that I like."

"What puzzles me is why he ever came here. He is asked about everywhere,
has all manner of great houses open to him, and stores of fine people,
of whose intimacy you can see he is proud; and yet he comes down to a
dull country place in a dull county; and, stranger than all, he seems to
like it."

"John Hunter says it is debt," said Mrs. Trafford.

"Mark Fortescue hints that a rich and handsome widow has something to
say to it."

"Paul M'Clintock declares that he saw your picture by Ary Scheffer in
the Exhibition, and fell madly in love with it, Bella."

"And old Colonel Orde says that he is intriguing to get in for the
borough of Coleraine; that he saw him in the garden t'other morning with
a list of the electors in his hand."

"My conjecture is, that he is intolerably bored everywhere, and came
down here to try the effect of a new mode of the infliction that he had
never experienced before. What else would explain a project I heard him
arrange for this morning,--a walk with Beck Graham!"

"Yes, I was in the window when he asked her where she usually went in
those wanderings over the fern hills, with that great umbrella; and she
told him to visit an old lady--a Mrs. Butler--who had been a dear friend
of her mother's; and then he said, 'I wish you 'd take me with you. I
have a positive weakness for old ladies;' and so the bargain was struck,
that they were to go to the cottage to-day together."

"Beck, of course, fancying that it means a distinct avowal of attention
to herself."

"And her sister, Sally, very fully persuaded that Maitland is a suitor
for her hand, and cunningly securing Beck's good offices before he risks
a declaration."

"Sally already believes that Mark is what she calls 'landed;' and she
gave me some pretty broad hints about the insufferable pretensions of
younger sons, to which class she consigns him."

"And Beck told me yesterday, in confidence, that Tony had been sent away
from home by his mother, as the last resource against the consequence of
his fatal passion for her."

"Poor Tony," sighed the young widow, "he never thought of her."

"Did he tell you as much, Alice?" said her sister, slyly.

"No, dear; it is the one subject--I mean love in any shape--that we
never discussed. The poor boy confessed to me all his grief about his
purposeless idle life, his mother's straitened fortune, a