“Well, but, mamma,” argued spoiled Augusta, “Jabez forgave him; and I think Madame Broadbent is more to blame than Mr. Aspinall—he only offered to bring me home.” Mrs. Ashton shook her head as she rose from table. “Besides, mamma, he says he only wants to apologise, and you know you need not invite him again unless you like. It would be so rude to refuse.” “Just so, just so,” assented Mr. Ashton, willing to humour his pet in her invalid state, “and perhaps it might do the young fellow good to see the consequences of his folly.” As usual, where Augusta enlisted her father on her side, Mrs. Ashton’s dissent grew feebler. The next day Mr. Ashton made at least _one_ false step in his life, and brought over his own threshold a blight. Faultless were the curves of the stylish hat, faultless the fit of pantaloons, and coat, and Hessian boots, and York-tan gloves; graceful the figure they adorned; graceful the apology tendered so adroitly—more to the mother than to the daughter—but if ever a graceless good-for-nothing cast a shadow on a good man’s hearth, it was the wolf in sheep’s clothing whose hungry jaws were watering for the pet lamb of the fold, and who made so courtly an exit full in the sight of Jabez, as he crossed the end of the hall to his solitary dinner in his own room. CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SEVENTH. MANHOOD. Young as he was, Laurence Aspinall was wont to say he “wouldn’t give a fig for any man who could not be anything in any society; and the Laurence Aspinall of the cock-pit, the ring, and the bar-parlour, was a very different being from the Laurence Aspinall of the Assembly or drawing-room. He could be a blackguard amongst blackguards, a gentleman amongst ladies.” Nature had done much for him, art had done more. Nature had given him at twenty-one a symmetrical figure, and art an easy carriage. Nature had given him the clear pink-and-white complexion which so often accompanies ruddy hair, and art had trained his early growth of whisker to counteract effeminacy of skin. Nature had given him a lofty forehead, art had clustered his bronze curls so as to hide how much that brow receded. Nature had given an aquiline nose, eyes of purest azure, flexile lips with curves like Cupid’s bow; and art had taught that eyes set so close, whose hue was so apt to change as temper swayed him, and lips so cruelly thin, might be tutored to obey volition, and contradict themselves, if so their owner willed. To crown all, nature had gifted him with a flexible voice, and art had set it to music. The Liverpool schoolmaster had obeyed Mr. Aspinall’s instructions to the letter; all that education and accomplishments could do to polish and refine the physical man into the gentleman, as the word was then understood, had been done for him; but under the stucco was the rough brickwork Bob the groom had heaped together, and which no trained or loving hand had removed.