fter an absence of several months. This was a period of
misfortune to me. I was then eighteen years of age. My father lay dead
in our cottage. I had lost my mother some years before. In this forlorn
situation I was surprised with a message from the squire, ordering me to
repair to the mansion-house the morning after my father's funeral.

Though I was not a stranger to books, I had no practical acquaintance
with men. I had never had occasion to address a person of this elevated
rank, and I felt no small uneasiness and awe on the present occasion. I
found Mr. Falkland a man of small stature, with an extreme delicacy of
form and appearance. In place of the hard-favoured and inflexible
visages I had been accustomed to observe, every muscle and petty line of
his countenance seemed to be in an inconceivable degree pregnant with
meaning. His manner was kind, attentive, and humane. His eye was full of
animation; but there was a grave and sad solemnity in his air, which,
for want of experience, I imagined was the inheritance of the great, and
the instrument by which the distance between them and their inferiors
was maintained. His look bespoke the unquietness of his mind, and
frequently wandered with an expression of disconsolateness and anxiety.

My reception was as gracious and encouraging as I could possibly desire.
Mr. Falkland questioned me respecting my learning, and my conceptions of
men and things, and listened to my answers with condescension and
approbation. This kindness soon restored to me a considerable part of my
self-possession, though I still felt restrained by the graceful, but
unaltered dignity of his carriage. When Mr. Falkland had satisfied his
curiosity, he proceeded to inform me that he was in want of a secretary,
that I appeared to him sufficiently qualified for that office, and that,
if, in my present change of situation, occasioned by the death of my
father, I approved of the employment, he would take me into his family.

I felt highly flattered by the proposal, and was warm in the expression
of my acknowledgments. I set eagerly about the disposal of the little
property my father had left, in which I was assisted by Mr. Collins. I
had not now a relation in the world, upon whose kindness and
interposition I had any direct claim. But, far from regarding this
deserted situation with terror, I formed golden visions of the station
I was about to occupy. I little suspected that the gaiety and lightness
of hea