"We shall be very happy to see you at Rosemullion," she said; and I promised to pay her an early visit.
"Well?" said my hostess, when I left Mrs. Carew's side.
"I cannot but approve," I answered. "I have never met a sweeter lady. If the daughter's nature resembles her mother's, and Reginald is fortunate enough to win her, he will be a happy man."
My hostess smiled and nodded in satisfaction. An inveterate match-maker, she was always delighted at the success of her good-natured schemes.
On the following day I visited Mrs. Carew, and made the acquaintance of her husband, Gabriel Carew. I will not waste time by giving a description of him. What you have already read will have prepared you for his introduction in propria persona. Sufficient to say that I was favourably impressed, and that I had not been in his company five minutes before I discovered that the gentleman I was conversing with was a man of extraordinary erudition and mental compass. I was fortunate enough to win his favour; he showed me over his library--a collection made by himself, and which could only have been gathered by one of superior attainments. That my society was agreeable to her husband was a manifest pleasure to Mrs. Carew, and once during his temporary absence to obtain a book of which we had been conversing she expressed a hope that we should be often together.
"He is too much of a recluse," she said. "I have wished that he should mix in society more than he does--indeed, he sees very little of life--but he has a distaste for it."
I replied that the distaste of a man like Gabriel Carew to share in the frivolities of the age was to be easily understood. She answered wisely, "Surely a little innocent frivolity is not to be condemned. One may become too serious."
"Mr. Carew is a student?" I said.
"From his early youth," she replied, "he has been devoted to book-lore. His young life was lived here in seclusion, and it was not till after the death of his parents that he saw anything of the world."
Mr. Carew returned, and looked at us smilingly. He touched his wife's hand lightly, but slight as was the action, there was affection in it.