On the whole, he was a worthy and even admirable specimen of the genus young man. No doubt he was conceited; he often offended people by his bumptiousness of opinion and hauteur of manner; he rather depressed the human race by the severity with which he classed this one and that one as “no gentleman,” because of slight defects in etiquette; he considerably amused older and wearier minds by the confidence with which he settled vexed questions of several thousand years’ standing; but with all these faults, he was a better and wiser and more agreeable fellow than one often meets at his age; he was a youth whom man could respect and woman adore. To noble souls it must be agreeable, I think, to see him at the present moment, anxious to know precisely what sorrows had clouded the life of his betrothed in the old house before him, and yet refraining from questioning her on the alluring subject, “because he was a gentleman.” The house itself kept its secret admirably. It had not a signature of character about it; it was as non-committal as an available candidate for the Presidency; it exhibited the plain, unornamental, unpoetic reserve of a Yankee Puritan. Whether it were a stage for comedy or tragedy, whether it were a palace for happy souls or a prison for afflicted ones, it gave not even a darkling hint. A sufficiently spacious edifice, but low of stature and with a long slope of back roof, it reminded one of a stocky and round-shouldered old farmer, like those who daily trudged by it to and from the market of Hampstead, hawing and geeing their fat cattle with lean, hard voices. A front door, sheltered by a small portico, opened into a hall which led straight through the building, with a parlor and bedroom on one side, and a dining-room and kitchen on the other. In the rear was a low wing serving as wash-house, lumber-room, and wood-shed. The white clapboards and green blinds were neither freshly painted nor rusty, but just sedately weather-worn. The grounds, the long woodpiles, the barn and its adjuncts, were all in that state of decent slovenliness which prevails amid the more rustic farming population of New England. On the whole, the place looked like the abode of one who had made a fair fortune by half a century or more of laborious and economical though not enlightened agriculture. “I must leave you now,” said Foster, when the two reached the gate of the “front-yard”; “I must get back to my work in Hampstead.” “And you won’t come in for a minute?” pleaded Bessie. “You know that I would be glad to come in and stay in for ever and ever. It seems now as if life were made for nothing but talking to you. But my fellow-men no doubt think differently. There are such things as lectures, and I must prepare a few of them. I really have pressing work to do.”