The peasant’s wife drew near, and afterwards the children gathered round them; their mother, in the pride of her heart, telling them to fetch their copy-books, and show the gentleman how well they could write. He had not finished the inspection or praised them half as much as they deserved when the Z—s and their companions advanced from the wood, when joyful recognition and long explanations completely changed the current of his thoughts. --------------------- CHAPTER VI. SECULARISED CLOISTERS. WHEN Hamilton returned to Seon he found there an addition to the guests he had left, in the person of Count Zedwitz’s son, a young officer who had come to spend part of his leave of absence with his family. His appearance was prepossessing, notwithstanding his very decided ugliness; for his yellow hair, impertinently degenerating into red in his bushy mustachios, nearly concealed a mouth of enormous proportions, and heightened the whiteness of his teeth of faultless purity, but unusually large and of irregular form. The almost flaxen eyebrows protruded far beyond eyes which were small and light-coloured, but full of intelligence; the nose thick, of indefinite form, and a forehead which would have delighted Gall, Spurzheim, or Combe, but from which a painter’s eye would have turned away to seek some more pleasing object. His figure was tall and well-proportioned, but, notwithstanding his youth, already denoted an inclination to stoutness.