handsome
pair, Harry was well pleased.

Rose, too, liked Harry Endicott. A young girl of twenty is not a
severe judge of a handsome, lively young man, who knows far more of
the world than she does; and though Harry's conversation was a perfect
Catherine-wheel of all sorts of wild talk,--sneering, bitter, and
sceptical, and giving expression to the most heterodox sentiments,
with the evident intention of shocking respectable authorities,--Rose
rather liked him than otherwise; though she now and then took the
liberty to stand upon her dignity, and opened her great blue eyes on
him with a grave, inquiring look of surprise,--a look that seemed to
challenge him to stand and defend himself. From time to time, too,
she let fall little bits of independent opinion, well poised and well
turned, that hit exactly where she meant they should; and Harry began
to stand a little in awe of her.

Harry had never known a woman like Rose; a woman so poised and
self-centred, so cultivated, so capable of deep and just reflections,
and so religious. His experience with women had not been fortunate, as
has been seen in this narrative; and, insensibly to himself, Rose was
beginning to exercise an influence over him. The sphere around her was
cool and bright and wholesome, as different from the hot atmosphere of
passion and sentiment and flirtation to which he had been accustomed,
as a New-England summer morning from a sultry night in the tropics.
Her power over him was in the appeal to a wholly different part of his
nature,--intellect, conscience, and religious sensibility; and once
or twice he found himself speaking to her quietly, seriously, and
rationally, not from the purpose of pleasing her, but because she had
aroused such a strain of thought in his own mind. There was a certain
class of brilliant sayings of his, of a cleverly irreligious and
sceptical nature, at which Rose never laughed: when this sort of
firework was let off in her presence, she opened her eyes upon him,
wide and blue, with a calm surprise intermixed with pity, but said
nothing; and, after trying the experiment several times, he gradually
felt this silent kind of look a restraint upon him.

At the same time, it must not be conjectured that, at present, Harry
Endicott was thinking of falling in love with Rose. In fact, he
scoffed at the idea of love, and professed to disbelieve in its
existence. And, beside all this, he was gratifying an idle vanity, and
the wicked l