Of the numerous admirers of Claribel it will be necessary for me only to mention two. The first was one John Archer, an ardent and virtuous youth, aged twenty-one, whose honest English face revealed the sincerity of his heart. He held the post of gamekeeper on the estate of Lord Edgedown. He was bold and generous, but of a nature so bashful and timid in matters regarding our sex, that he would have allowed himself to be cut out in a love affair by a man not possessing one half his merit or his good looks. As my father was on good terms with the father of John Archer, John was always a welcome visitor at our house, and thus began his acquaintance with Claribel. I really think if he had persisted in his suit, as a more courageous lover would have done, that he must at last have won the love of Claribel. I know that Claribel had the highest esteem for him, and had learnt to sympathise with him as one noble nature sympathises with another. They grew to treat each other as brother and sister, but this was all. The other lover was a totally different sort of man. Richard de Chevron was a scion of a noble house, had received the education of a gentleman, and could mix in the highest society; but he was debauched, profligate, a gamester, and a drunkard, of a mean and spiteful disposition, with nothing noble whatever in his character and not even good looking, but he had that persistency in wooing which John lacked, added to a very smooth tongue and plentiful flow of language. Neither was he quite without accomplishments; he could both play and sing well, and dance to perfection; qualities which might have won the heart of a less austere maiden than my friend Claribel. But Claribel retired, as she was, in disposition and a perfect dunce in that education which mixing in the world gives, had yet by nature, by way of compensation, such a marvellously acute perception of human character, that it bordered on the prophetic in many instances. In a word, she was a physiognomist. On seeing Richard de Chevron for the first time, she had taken an instant aversion to him, without ever having heard anything against his character, and though De Chevron tried hard to dispel the sinister impression with which he could not fail to observe he had inspired her--and I must own that he did his best--yet that impression never left her, but, on the contrary, deepened after every visit.