"Come, my dear sir," he then said, changing his purpose, "come to my room, before we are inveigled into fashionable talk--I must have you all to myself." And he dragged rather than led him from the room, just as Mr. Stokes, a sporting gentleman from Gloucestershire, was announced. Maria started from her lazy position, flung aside her book, and darting to Mabel, snatched the pocket-handkerchief she was hemming from her hand, almost disordering her hair by the violence of the action, and then hurriedly seated herself, as if she had been working. This little diversion, in her favor, was covered by the retreat of the two gentlemen, and the necessary pause at the door, as the one party retreated, and Mr. Stokes entered, whip in hand, with splashed boots, and the dress which most became him, his red hunting coat, which gave point to his blunt, off-hand manners. Mabel pitied, and struggled, with her accustomed gentleness, to excuse her cousin's rudeness, as she listened to Mr. Stokes's blunt compliment on Maria's needle-work, and his animated account of the chace, from which he had just ridden home. Some accidental allusion to Gloucestershire soon told him that Mabel was from his native country--and being a great lover of everything that seemed like home, he began talking to her so fast, that she had little need to say anything to help forward the conversation. Maria was evidently annoyed--and Mabel did her best to be silent; but it was an unfortunate afternoon, and seemed destined to make her worse enemies than she had before. Her silence could not be imputed to stupidity by the dullest, who looked in her face; and the squire, charmed with the idea of having made her shy, which he deemed the effect of something in himself, and, at the same time, feeling the charm of retreating beauty, pursued what he deemed an amusing advantage, addressed all his jokes and stories to her, and called for her approval of his quotations from their county dialect, which were so inimitable and so familiar, that she could no longer suppress her smiles. Maria bit her lips to conceal her vexation. True, he laughed just as immoderately over the use she made of the whimsical slang of the day--called her a "funny fellow," and taught her pretty oaths, which, after all, are but a kind of paper currency for sin. Yet, when he spoke to Mabel, he insensibly assumed more respect for himself and her; for few men are so quick at discovering where respect is really due, as those who are the most ready to lay it aside, when in their power to do so.