"You are not usually so severe, my lord!"
"I am not usually so sincere, Miss Beaufort," answered he; "but I see you think for yourself, therefore I make no hesitation in speaking what I think—to you."
His auditor bowed her head sportively but modestly. Lady Dundas at that moment beckoned him across the room. She compelled him to sit down to whist. He cast a rueful glance at Mary, and took a seat opposite to his costly partner.
"Lord Berrington is a very worthy young man," observed the clergyman to whom at the beginning of the evening Miss Beaufort had resigned her chair; "I presume, madam, you have been honoring him with your conversation?"
"Yes," returned Mary, noticing the benign countenance of the speaker; "I have not had the pleasure of long knowing his lordship, but what I have seen of his character is highly to his advantage."
"I was intimate in his father's house for years," rejoined the gentleman: "I knew this young nobleman from a boy. If he has faults, he owes them to his mother, who doated on him, and rather directed his care to the adornment of his really handsome person than to the cultivation of talents he has since learned to appreciate."
"I believe Lord Berrington to be very sensible, and, above all, very humane," returned Miss Beaufort.
"He is so," replied the old gentleman; "yet it was not till he had attained the age of twenty-two that he appeared to know he had anything to do in the world besides dressing and attending on the fair sex. His taste produced the first, whilst the urbanity of his disposition gave birth to the latter. When Berrington arrived at his title, he was about five-and-twenty. Sorrow for the death of his amiable parents, who died in the same month, afforded him leisure to find his reason. He discovered that he had been acting a part beneath him, and he soon implanted on the good old stock those excellent acquirements which you see he possesses. In spite of his regeneration," continued the clergyman, casting a good-humored glance on the dove-colored suit of the viscount, "you perceive that first impressions will remain. He loves dress, but he loves justice and philanthropy better."
"This eulogy, sir," said Mary, "affords me real pleasure, may I know the name of the gentleman with whom I have the honor to converse?"
"My name is Blackmore," returned he.