“You mean if you were to marry?” said Rosalind, in a matter-of-fact tone, rising from her chair. “I don’t approve of a man who always has to be stirred up by his wife; but marry by all means, Roland, if you think that is the best way. Nobody would have the least objection; in short, I am sure all your best friends would like it, and I, for one, would give her the warmest welcome. But still I should prefer, you know, first to see you acting for yourself. Why, there is the quarter chiming, and I promised to let Saunders know when we went to dress. Aunt Sophy will be down-stairs directly. Ring the bell, and let us run; we shall be late again. But the firelight is so pleasant.” She disappeared out of the room before she had done speaking, flying up-stairs to escape the inevitable response, and left poor Roland, tantalized and troubled, to meet the gloomy looks of Saunders, who reminded him that there was but twelve minutes and a half to dress in, and that Mrs. Lennox was very particular about the fish. Saunders took liberties with the younger visitors, and he too had known young Mr. Hamerton all his life. CHAPTER XXIX. It was not on that day, but the next, that Uncle John arrived so suddenly, bringing with him the friend whom he had picked up in Switzerland. This was a man still young, but not so young as Roland Hamerton, with looks a little worn, as of a man who had been, as he himself said, “knocking about the world.” Perhaps, indeed, they all thought afterwards, it was his dress which suggested this idea; for when he appeared dressed for the evening he turned out in reality a handsome man, with the very effective contrast of hair already gray, waving upwards from a countenance not old enough to justify that change, and lighted up with dark eyes full of light and humor and life. The hair which had changed its color so early had evidently been very dark in his youth, and Mrs. Lennox, who was always a little romantic, could not help suggesting, when Rosalind and she awaited the gentlemen in the drawing-room after dinner, that Mr. Rivers might be an example of one of the favorite devices of fiction, the turning gray in a single night, which is a possibility of which every one has heard. “I should not wonder if he has had a very remarkable life,” Aunt Sophy said. “No doubt the servants and common people think him quite old, but when you look into it, it is a young face.” She took her chair by the fireside, and arranged all her little paraphernalia, and unfolded her crewel-work, and had done quite half a leaf before she burst forth again, as if without any interval, “though full of lines, and what you might call wrinkles if you did not know better! In my young days such a man would have been thought like Lara or Conrad, or one of Byron’s other heroes. I don’t know who to compare him to nowadays, for men of that sort are quite out of fashion; but he is quite a hero, I have a conviction, and saved John’s life.”