With which speech the young man disappeared out of sight amid the wondering assembly, which privately designated him a young puppy and a young prig, and by various other epithets, according to the individual mind of the speaker. As for Lady Hallamshire, she was considerably disgusted. “Your friend is original, I dare say; but I am not sure that he is quite civil,” she said to Matty, who did not quite know whether to be vexed or pleased by Colin’s abrupt withdrawal. Perhaps on the whole the young lady liked him better for having a mind of his own, notwithstanding his devotion, and for preferring to bestow his worship without the assistance of spectators. If he had been a man in the least eligible as a lover, Miss Frankland might have been of a different opinion; but, as that was totally out of possibility, Matty liked, on the whole, that he should do what was ideally right, and keep up her conception of him. She gave her head a pretty toss of semi-defiance, and went across the room to Mrs. Jordan, to whom she was very amiable and caressing all the rest of the evening. But she still continued to watch with the corner of her eye the tall boyish figure which was now and then to be discerned in the distance, with those masses of brown hair heaped like clouds upon the forehead, which Colin’s height made visible over the heads of many very superior people. She knew he was watching her and noted every movement she made, and she felt a little proud of the slave, who, though he was only the tutor and a poor farmer’s son, had something in his eyes which nobody else within sight had any inkling of. Matty was rather clever in her way, which was as much different from Colin’s as light from darkness. No man of a mental calibre like hers could have found him out; but she had a little insight, as a woman, which enabled her to perceive the greater height when she came within sight of it. And then poor Colin, all unconsciously, had given her such an advantage over him. He had laid his boy’s heart at her feet, and, half in love, half in imagination, had made her the goddess of his youth. If she had thought it likely to do him any serious damage, perhaps Matty, who was a good girl enough, and was of some use to the rector and very popular among the poor in her own parish, might have done her duty by Colin, and crushed this pleasant folly in the bud. But then it did not occur to her that a “friendship” of which it was so very evident nothing could ever come, could harm anybody. It did not occur to her that an ambitious Scotch boy, who knew no more of the world than a baby, and who had been fed upon all the tales of riches achieved and glories won which are the common fare of many a homely household, might possibly entertain a different opinion. So Matty asked all kinds of questions about him of Mrs. Jordan, and gave him now and then a little nod when she met his eye, and generally kept up a kind of special