But he was no such likely mate for Lady Bell, even had she been free, that she should be carried off her feet by his homespun attractions. These had not been cultivated beyond the point to which their natural manliness and intelligence had been brought by the parson of the parish, who had volunteered to act as young Kingscote of Nutfield’s governor, and by the country town’s fencing and dancing master, who had undertaken to convey to the young fellow a version of the deportment and manners of a gentleman. But Lady Bell had known fine gentlemen. Lady Bell had been determined on keeping Master Charles at a distance. She owed it to the sedateness with which she was bound to behave, and to her knowledge of the real difference of their rank. So she began by being very quiet and reserved, and by resisting the faint and finally bashful advances of the master of the house. But circumstances were tremendously against Lady Bell. Nutfield was a country house where winter was approaching. Miss Kingscote was a garrulous rustic, from whom neither edification nor enlivenment, except of one kind, could be expected. Master Charles was a gentleman, although of the plainer sort, prepossessing in look and speech, not without parts, information, and spirit, of an age not exceeding twenty-two. Lady Bell was guileless, ingenuous as far as she dared to be ingenuous, naturally animated and enterprising, trained in a school of refinement and finish, and delicately handsome. Lady Bell was unable to gainsay Master Charles in making friends with him, so far as allowing him to be on cordial terms with her. Soon he brought her trophies from the game preserves and hunting field. He consulted her on his purchases in the little town. “Look here, Miss Barlowe,” he would say, “my tailor tells me this brocade, of which I have a pattern for a waistcoat, was brought right from France on an order of Sir Peregrine Cust’s. Do you affect it? lend me your taste.” He told her of his engagements, and gave her a full account of his sayings and doings, and those of his friends. “I was at Colonel Barnard’s last night,” he would mention. “We had games, and the ladies proposed riddles. I wish my plaguey memory had retained them for the benefit of Deb and you, Miss Barlowe. What do you think? Miss Polly, the colonel’s daughter, stood up and danced a jig first-rate with her brother the sailor.” He confessed that he had been longing desperately for his commission, but he was not so impatient now that Miss Barlowe had kindly consented to bear his sister company. They formed quite a little colony at home, who could play cribbage, piquet, or Pope Joan, of an evening, and be independent of the great world without—not that he was not going where glory waited him, that he did not mean to earn his right to sit down like an old man by his modest fire-side.