The young people voted him an author—perhaps a poet—certainly a student; and Margaret’s mother was not at all displeased when the young student applied to her for summer-quarters; for to tell the truth, she had already resolved such a possibility in her mind. He said he wished home comforts, which were not to be found at a country tavern, and delicately conveyed his firm impression that her house would be to him a perfect elysium. She was not prepared to take a stranger into the house, lived in a plain way, and all that. But he protested that these objections were precisely the advantages that he sought in a country visit—the absence of a mercenary calculation—a mouthful for each penny paid, and a set price for lodgings. Where one party is determined, and the other opposes only feigned resistance, the point at issue is soon determined, and Bernard was at once domiciliated at Chestnut-Farm. Never was man so little trouble as he—never were family so much infatuated with a stranger. Margaret and all partook of the fascination. It seemed as if she never would tire of reciting his praises to Simon at their daily meetings. She was very anxious that the two young men should be intimate, and as she said, “like each other very much.” She knew that they would do so if each could only know the good points of the other as well as she knew both. But neither of them could be inspired with any very warm attachment in the direction she desired. Bernard was civil and courteous to Simon, as he was to every body; but Margaret thought she could detect some appearance of undervaluing her lover on the part of the stranger. And he permitted this impression to be gathered in the most agreeable manner—that is to say, as if he accidentally betrayed his sense of her exceeding worth, and his sorrow that she was to be sacrificed to Simon. In no way did he attempt to derogate from that individual’s good points in the abstract, or as plain Simon—but it was as Margaret’s accepted that he fell below Bernard’s standard. Margaret pleaded with Bernard for her lover, and that was dangerous business, because it was in some sort admitting what Bernard rather implied than alleged. It was reading his hieroglyphics, and that indicated a common understanding between them, and emboldened Bernard, while it threw Margaret in the way of temptation.