“Oh, I am all right,” he said, going out of the room. If I am obliged to tell the truth, I must say that I do not think his departure was any great loss to his mother and sister. Mrs. Eastwood sighed, half because it was the first night of his return, and she felt the slight of his speedy withdrawal, and half because of an old prejudice in her mind that it was best for young men when not engaged to spend their evenings at home. But Frederick never made himself at all delightful at home, after an absence like this, for reasons of which she was altogether unconscious. Nelly did not sigh at all, and if she felt her brother’s departure, did so more in anger than in sorrow. “Are all young men coxcombs like that, I wonder?” she said. “Hush, Nelly, you are always hard upon Frederick. Most of them are disposed that way, I am afraid; and not much wonder either when girls flatter their vanity. We must teach Innocent not to be so demonstrative,” said Mrs. Eastwood. She sighed again, remembering her friend’s warning. “Perhaps Jane Everard was not so much in the wrong, Nelly, after all.” “I suppose people who take the worst view of everything and everybody must be in the right sometimes,” said Nelly indignantly--a saying in which there was more truth than she thought. CHAPTER XII. A LOVE TALE. I am obliged at this moment to interrupt the history of Innocent’s entrance into English life by the intrusion of another event which occurred quite suddenly, and without adequate preparation, a few days after the arrival of the traveller, and which threw Innocent for the moment altogether into the shade. It was not a deeply premeditated event, as perhaps it ought to have been, aiming as it did at such very important results, and affecting two lives in so momentous a way. On this particular afternoon there had been a flood of visitors at the Elms, such as now and then occurs without rhyme or reason--every acquaintance the Eastwoods possessed seeming to be moved by a unanimous impulse. From two o’clock until five the callers kept pouring in. On ordinary occasions one or two a day kept the house lively; this was one of those accidental floods which obey, as philosophers tell us, some fantastic law of their own, like the number of undirected letters put into the post-office. Two gentlemen arrived among the latest, both of whom had hoped to find the ladies alone, and who grinned and shook hands with each other, and told each other the news with the most delightful amiability, though their internal emotions were less sweet. They arrived together, and as the room was still tolerably full, they became each other’s companions, and stood in a corner talking with the most confidential aspect, after they had shaken hands with Mrs. Eastwood. Nelly was at the other extremity of the room, at the door-window which opened into the conservatory, talking to Sir Alexis Longueville, a man with a rent-roll as long as his name, whom both the gentlemen I have