Mrs. Ross was a little, bustling, notable woman, who picqued herself upon her good housewifery, could not endure a _litter_, and thought books and papers made the most intolerable of any: Mr. Ross was therefore obliged to confine his to his study, and the girls the few they were allowed to their own bed-room, which was considered equally the apartment of Ellen and Joanna. Mr. Ross had heard a great deal for the last two or three days of Mr. Mordaunt from his daughter and Ellen: he saw they were greatly pleased with their new acquaintance; but knowing their simplicity, and the charm of novelty to youth, was desirous of judging for himself how far the traveller was a proper companion for them. Ross had formerly seen something of the world, and was of course more qualified to judge of character than Powis, or two girls so totally unacquainted with guile as Ellen and Joanna were: he determined, if he found any thing in the manners of the stranger repulsive to his ideas of propriety, to put an end to all connection with him; and Mrs. Ross, who felt assured the traveller must have fallen in love with one of the girls, resolved, as she expressed it, to keep a _sharp look out_ upon him: such, however, was the unaffected propriety of Mordaunt's manners, mingled with somewhat of dignity, to which Mrs. Ross had never been accustomed, and which Ross had not lately seen, that the good little woman was awed into silence; and though Charles had infected her with some of his jealous fears (for such they certainly were), she soon lost the kind of prejudice she had taken up against the traveller, was pleased with "_the gentleman_," as she called him, and could not ascertain at all to her own satisfaction whether Joanna or Ellen, or either, had been his inducement to remain at Llanwyllan. Ross was not only charmed with Mordaunt's manners, but had not for years enjoyed so exquisite a treat as his conversation. The traveller was fully competent to cope even with Ross on literary ground, understood the learned languages, was an enthusiast in the classics, an excellent historian and geographer; and gave Ross in an hour the most perspicuous account of all that was then passing in the political world.