"Leslie, I don't think you have anything to do with that."
"No, certainly; Hector Garret and I are two very different persons."
"Well, mamma."
"I wish you would not say Hector Garret; it does not sound proper in a girl like you."
"I suppose it does not. He must have been a grown-up man when I was a child. I have caught the habit from papa, but I have not the least inclination to use the name to his face."
"I should think not, Leslie;" and the conversation dropped.
Presently the stranger entered deliberately; a tall, fair, handsome man of eight-and-thirty or forty, with one of those cold, intellectual, statuesque faces in which there is a chill harmony, and which are types of a calm temperament, or an extinct volcano. Perhaps it was that cast of countenance which recommended him to the Bowers; yet Leslie was dark, bright, and variable.
The visitor brought a gift in his hand—a basket of flowers and summer fruit, of which Leslie relieved him, while she struggled in vain to look politely obliged, and not irrationally elated.
"So kind of you to trouble yourself! Such a beautiful flower—wild roses and hawthorn too—I like so much to have them, though they wither very soon. I dare say they grew where