The Professor

sworth watched sharply for defects, but found none; he set Timothy Steighton, his favourite and head man, to watch also. Tim was baffled; I was as exact a

te, which I was able to leave there, saying that my travelling expenses were already provided for. Mr. Crimsworth employed Tim to find out whether my landlady had any complaint to make on the score of my morals; she answered that she believed I was a very religious man, and asked Tim, in her turn, if he thought I had any intention of going into the Church some day; for, she said, she had had young curates to lodge in her house who were nothing equal to me for steadiness and quietness. Tim was “a religious man” himself; indeed, he was “a joined Methodist,” which did not (be it understood) prevent him from being at the same time an engrained rascal, and he came away much posed at hearing this account of my piety.

vouchsafed me no more notice than was expressed by a distant move; Crimsworth, of course, never spoke to me; I was introduced to none of the band of young ladies, who, enveloped in silvery clouds of white gauze and muslin, sat in array against me on the opposite side of a long and large room; in fact, I was fairly isolated, and could but contemplate the shining ones from affar, and whe

ands than mine. I turned away tantalized, left the dancers, and wandered into the oak-panelled dining-room. No fibre of sympathy united me to any living thing in this house; I looked for and found my mother’s picture. I took a wax taper from a stand, and held it up. I gazed long, earnestly; my heart grew to the image. My mother, I perceived, had bequeathed to me much of her features and countenance — her forehead, her eyes, her complexion. No regular

’s some sense

it in detail, the reader must be content with the silhouette I have just thrown off; it was all I myself saw of him for the moment: I did not investigate the colour of his eyebrows, nor of his eyes either; I saw his s

me from my superior. I had frequently seen Hunsden in Bigben Close, where he came almost weekly to transact business with Mr. Crimsworth, but I had never spoken to him, nor he to me, and I owed him a sort of involuntary grudge, becaus

s. I had already noticed that Mr. Hunsden indulged in a

; but my mood is not, perhaps, so supple as he deem

nt than courteous, and continued to move a

in the dancing-room; besides, you don’t d

t addressed me out of condescension, but because, having repaired to the cool dining-room for refreshment, he now wanted s

e,” he continued, recu

er the face pr

it is peculiar; it seems to think. You could have a talk with that woman,

m, but did not s

sen-si-tive (so he articulated it, curling his lip at the same time) in that mouth; besides,

patrician descent may be read in a d

? Not theirs assuredly. As to their women, it is a little different: they cultivate beauty from childhood upwards, and may by care and training attain to a certain degree of excelle

re yourself and Mr. Edwar

t inherit from his mother, the patrician, but from his father, old Crimsworth, who, my father says, was as veritable a —— shire blue-dyer as ever put indigo in a vat yet with

h which rather pleased me than otherwise because it set me at

rth’s brother? I thought you and everybody else

oor clerk? You do Crimsworth’s work, and he g

still his manner did not offend me in the least — it only piqued m

s an absurd o

, Mr. H

are yourself a strong proof o

lf of his own accord, without my pressin

to become a tradesman?

ous intention t

ook like a tradesman! What a prac

the Lord made i

umps of ideality, comparison, self-esteem, conscientiousness, do you here?

I have no

now — I want to dance again; and I see such a fine girl sitting in the corner of the sofa there by her mamma; s

ng whose inhabitants it was proverbially said, that not one in a thousand knew his own grandfather. Moreover the Hunsdens, once rich, were still independent; and report affirmed that Yorke bade fair, by his success in business, to restore to pristine prosperity the partially decayed fortunes of his house. These circumstances considered, Mrs. Lupton’s broad face might well wear a smile of complacency as she contemplated the heir of Hunsden Wood occupied in paying assiduous court to her darling Sarah Martha. I, however, whose observations being less anxious, were likely to be more accurate, soon saw that the grounds for maternal self-congratulation were slight indeed; the gentleman appeared to me much more desirous of making, than susceptible of receiving an impression. I know not what it was in Mr. Hunsden that, as I watched him (I had nothing better to do), suggested to me, every now and then, the idea of a foreigner