With such conversation as this, the professor and his noble boarder--for such was the young man whom we have just introduced to the reader--entered the house. Who this young man was, and what was his object in taking up his abode with Professor Lockerby, we will explain in a few words, although such explanation is rendered in part nearly unnecessary by the conversation just recorded between him and the professor. It may not be amiss, however, to say, in more distinct terms, that he was the Earl of Wistonbury, a rank which he had attained just a year before, by the sudden and premature death of his father, who died in the forty-fifth year of his age. Since his accession to the title of his ancestors, the young earl had continued to live in retirement with his mother, a woman of a noble, elevated, and generous soul, well becoming her high lineage--for she, too, was descended of one of the noblest families in England--but in whose temper there was occasionally made visible a dash of the leaven of aristocracy. On her son, the young earl, her only surviving child, she doted with all the affection of the fondest and tenderest of mothers; and well worthy was that son of all the love she could bestow. His was one of those natures which no earthly elevation can corrupt, no factitious system deprive of its innate simplicity. The promotion of the young earl to the head of his illustrious house, was, however, a premature one in more respects than one. One of these was to be found in the circumstance of the young man's being found unprepared--at least so he judged himself--in the matter of education, to fill with credit the high station to which he was so unexpectedly called. His education, in truth, had been rather neglected; and it was to make up for this neglect, to recover his lost ground with all the speed possible, that he was now come to reside for a few months with Professor Lockerby, who had once acted as tutor in his father's family to a brother who had died young. Such, then, was the professor's boarder, and such was the purpose for which he became so. The favourable impression which the youthful earl's first appearance had made, suffered no diminution by length of acquaintance. Mild and unpresuming, he won the love of all who came in contact with him. The little personal services he required, he always solicited, never commanded; and what he could with any propriety do himself, he always did, without seeking other assistance. A quiet and unostentatious inmate of the professor's, time rolled rapidly, but gently and imperceptibly, over the head of the young earl, until a single week only intervened between the moment referred to, and the period fixed on for his return to Oxton Hall.