The Earl of Nithsdale, however, was not one who had ever been completely carried away in the vortex of dissipation. He had still cherished within his mind an ideal model of perfection, which had preserved him from yielding up his affections to any of the fair creatures who fluttered around him. He had always resolved that the woman to whom he should unite himself should be pure as the unsunned snow, with mind, soul, and affections fresh and unpolluted. It was, therefore, willingly that he entered into the alliance urged by the agent of his master--a master towards whom he inherited loyalty with the blood which flowed in his veins, and to whom, since his interview with him in Flanders, he felt additionally bound by every tie of romantic honour. Lord Nithsdale had sought that interview with all the feelings of enthusiasm naturally inspired by the circumstance of the young prince so gallantly entering the King of France's army. He was then saddened at the appearance of ill-health visible in the Chevalier, and he was disheartened by perceiving how poorly he was attended. These facts, unpromising as they were, affected his hopes of success, but they did not lessen the interest he felt for the royal exile. The divisions among the Chevalier's adherents, consequent upon Colonel Hook's imprudent neglect of the more moderate Jacobites, who were not prepared rashly and unconditionally to yield the hard-earned liberties of their country into the hands of a restored monarch, portended, to a person who was not of a sanguine temperament, the ill-success which attended the attempt of 1707, but it did not for a moment affect his allegiance. This despondent, yet devoted loyalty threw over his whole demeanour a tinge of melancholy, which was calculated to render him only more interesting in the eyes of a young girl; and she soon learned to watch with anxiety the varying expression of his brow, and to hail with joy the smile which her presence invariably called forth. His affection for her was a mingled feeling of almost parental care and protection, with a punctilious respect, excited by her innocence and her noble birth. She had been brought up to honour and to obey; and the love to which she gladly and dutifully yielded every faculty of her soul, evinced itself in a thousand actions of almost filial reverence. She was unaccustomed to the common attentions mechanically granted by the other sex, and unconsciously received by those who have lived in the world; and he sometimes smilingly checked her when she stooped for her own roll of silk, or performed for herself and others a thousand little services, which, in former days especially, were exacted not only from a lover, but from all gentlemen towards all ladies.