regions--it would be ridiculous to suppose that he was not “of our own class.” Even Aunt Sophy’s not very fastidious taste detected a few wants about him. He was not quite perfect in all points in his manners; he hesitated when a man in society would not have hesitated. He had not been at any university, nor even at a public school. All these things, however, Mrs. Lennox accounted for easily--when she took the trouble to think of them at all--by the supposition that he had been brought up at home, most likely in the country. “Depend upon it, he is an only child,” she said to Rosalind, “and he has been delicate--one can see that he is delicate still--and they have brought him up at home. Well, perhaps it is wrong--at least, all the gentlemen say so; but if I had an only child I think I should very likely do the same, and I am sure I feel very much for his poor mother. Why? Oh, because I don’t think he is strong, Rosalind. He colors like a girl when he makes any little mistake. He is not one of your bold young men that have a way of carrying off everything. He does make little mistakes, but then that is one of the things that is sure to happen when you bring boys up at home.” Rosalind, who became more and more inclined as the days went on to take the best view of young Everard’s deficiencies, accepted very kindly this explanation. It silenced finally, she believed, that chill and horrible doubt, that question which she had put to herself broadly when she saw him first, which she did not even insinuate consciously now, but which haunted her, do what she would. Was he, perhaps, not exactly a gentleman? No, she did not ask that now. No doubt Aunt Sophy (who sometimes hit upon the right explanation, though she could not be called clever) was right, and the secret of the whole matter was that he had been brought up at home. There could be no doubt that the deficiencies which had at first suggested this most awful of all questions became rather interesting than otherwise when you came to know him better. They were what might be called ignorances, self-distrusts, an unassured condition of mind, rather than deficiencies; and his blush over his “little mistakes,” as Mrs. Lennox called them, and the half-uttered apology and the deprecatory look, took away from a benevolent observer all inclination towards unkindly criticism. Mrs. Lennox, who soon became “quite fond of” the young stranger, told him frankly when he did anything contrary to the code of society, and he took such rebukes in the very best spirit, but was unfortunately apt to forget and fall into the same blunder again. There were some of these mistakes which kept the ladies in amusement, and some which made Rosalind, as she became more and more “interested,” blush with hot shame--a far more serious feeling than that which made the young offender blush. For instance, when he found her sketch-book one morning, young Everard fell into ecstasies