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business-like face you have!"
    "My face is as the Lord made it, Mr. Hunsden."
    "The Lord never made either year face or head for X— What good
can your bumps of ideality, comparison, self-esteem,
conscientiousness, do you here? But if you like Bigben Close,
stay there; it's your own affair, not mine."
    "Perhaps I have no choice."
    "Well, I care nought about it—it will make little difference to
me what you do or where you go; but I'm cool now—I want to dance
again; and I see such a fine girl sitting in the corner of the
sofa there by her mamma; see if I don't get her for a partner in
a jiffy! There's Waddy—Sam Waddy making up to her; won't I cut
him out?"
    And Mr. Hunsden strode away. I watched him through the open
folding-doors; he outstripped Waddy, applied for the hand of the
fine girl, and led her off triumphant. She was a tall,
well-made, full-formed, dashingly-dressed young woman, much in
the style of Mrs. E. Crimsworth; Hunsden whirled her through the
waltz with spirit; he kept at her side during the remainder of
the evening, and I read in her animated and gratified countenance
that he succeeded in making himself perfectly agreeable. The
mamma too (a stout person in a turban—Mrs. Lupton by name)
looked well pleased; prophetic visions probably flattered her
inward eye. The Hunsdens were of an old stem; and scornful as
Yorke (such was my late interlocutor's name) professed to be of
the advantages of birth, in his secret heart he well knew and
fully appreciated the distinction his ancient, if not high
lineage conferred on him in a mushroom-place like X—,
concerning 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. In form and
features he might be pronounced English, though even there one
caught a dash of something Gallic; but he had no English shyness:
he had learnt somewhere, somehow, the art of setting himself
quite at his ease, and of allowing no insular timidity to
intervene as a barrier between him and his convenience or
pleasure. Refinement he did not affect, yet vulgar he could not
be called; he was not odd—no quiz—yet he resembled no one else
I had ever seen before; his general bearing intimated complete,
sovereign satisfaction with himself; yet, at times, an
indescribable shade passed like an eclipse over his countenance,
and seemed to me like the sign of a sudden and strong inward
doubt of himself, his words and actions-an energetic discontent
at his life or his social position, his future prospects or his
mental attainments—I know not which; perhaps after all it might
only be a bilious caprice.

Chapter IV
*
    No man likes to acknowledge that he has made a mistake in the
choice of his profession, and every man, worthy of the name, will
row long against wind and tide before he allows himself to cry
out, "I am baffled!" and submits to be floated passively back to
land. From the first week of my residence in X— I felt my
occupation irksome. The thing itself—the work of copying and
translating business-letters—was a dry and tedious task enough,
but had that been all, I should long have borne with the
nuisance; I am not of an