well read, and an artist of no mean pretensions. Above all, "his heart
was in the right place," as his father used to observe. Nothing could
exceed the deference he always showed to him. His mother had long been
dead.

I do not know whether it was Edward's own ambition or his proud father's
wishes that had led him to attend the Hamley assemblies. I should
conjecture the latter, for Edward had of himself too much good taste to
wish to intrude into any society. In the opinion of all the shire, no
society had more reason to consider itself select than that which met at
every full moon in the Hamley assembly-room, an excrescence built on to
the principal inn in the town by the joint subscription of all the county
families. Into those choice and mysterious precincts no towns person was
ever allowed to enter; no professional man might set his foot therein; no
infantry officer saw the interior of that ball, or that card-room. The
old original subscribers would fain have had a man prove his sixteen
quarterings before he might make his bow to the queen of the night; but
the old original founders of the Hamley assemblies were dropping off;
minuets had vanished with them, country dances had died away; quadrilles
were in high vogue--nay, one or two of the high magnates of ---shire were
trying to introduce waltzing, as they had seen it in London, where it had
come in with the visit of the allied sovereigns, when Edward Wilkins made
his _debut_ on these boards. He had been at many splendid assemblies
abroad, but still the little old ballroom attached to the George Inn in
his native town was to him a place grander and more awful than the most
magnificent saloons he had seen in Paris or Rome. He laughed at himself
for this unreasonable feeling of awe; but there it was notwithstanding.
He had been dining at the house of one of the lesser gentry, who was
under considerable obligations to his father, and who was the parent of
eight "muckle-mou'ed" daughters, so hardly likely to oppose much
aristocratic resistance to the elder Mr. Wilkins's clearly implied wish
that Edward should be presented at the Hamley assembly-rooms. But many a
squire glowered and looked black at the introduction of Wilkins the
attorney's son into the sacred precincts; and perhaps there would have
been much more mortification than pleasure in this assembly to the young
man, had it not been for an incident that occurred pretty late in the
evening. The lord-li