“I am in my thirteenth,” said Sophy, resisting every step of her way to the door, dancing in front of her uncle, who was directing her towards it. When Sophy found that resistance was vain, she tried entreaty. “Oh, Uncle John, don’t send me away! Rosalind promised I should sit up to-night because you were coming home.” “Then Rosalind must take the consequences,” said John Trevanion. All this time the stranger had been standing silent, with a slight smile on his face, watching the whole party, and forming those unconscious conclusions with which we settle everybody’s character and qualities when we come into a new place. This little skirmish was all in his favor, as helping him to a comprehension of the situation; the saucy child, the indulgent old aunt, the disapproving guardian, of whom alone Sophy was a little afraid, made a simple group enough. But when he turned to the subject of the little disturbance, he found in Rosalind’s smile a curious light thrown upon the altercation. Was she in real danger of becoming an old maid? He thought her looking older than the child had said, a more gracious and perfect woman than was likely to be the subject of such a controversy; and he saw, by the eager look and unnecessary indignation of Hamerton, sufficient evidence that the fate of the elder sister was by no means so certain as Sophy thought, and that, at all events, it was in her own hands. The young fellow had seemed to Mr. Rivers a pleasant young fellow enough in the after-dinner talk, but when he thus involuntarily coupled him with Rosalind, his opinion changed in a curious way. The young man was not good enough for her. A touch of indignation mingled, he could not tell why, in this conclusion; indignation against unconscious Roland, who aspired to one so much above him, and at the family who were so little aware that this girl was the only one of them the least remarkable. He smiled at himself afterwards for the earnestness with which he decided all this; settling the character of people whom he had never seen before in so unjustifiable a fashion. The little new world thus revealed to him had nothing very novel in it. The only interesting figure was the girl who was in her twenty-first year. She was good enough for the heroine of a romance of a higher order than any that could be involved in the mild passion of young Hamerton; and it pleased the stranger to think, from the unconcerned way in which Rosalind looked at her admirer, that she was evidently of this opinion too. “Rosalind,” said John Trevanion, after the episode of Sophy was over, and she was safely dismissed to bed, “will you show Rivers the miniatures? He is a tremendous authority on art.” “Bring the little lamp then, Uncle John; there is not light enough. We are very proud of them ourselves, but if Mr. Rivers is a great authority, perhaps they will not please him so much.”