immediately, with a frank artlessness, smiled an acceptance of his
request.

It was the custom in Hodnet for the gentlemen to employ the morning of
the succeeding day in paying their respects to the ladies with whom they
had danced on the previous evening. Requesting permission to wait upon
his partner and her mother next day, it was without much difficulty
obtained. This was surely very imprudent in Mrs. Sommers, and everybody
said it was very imprudent. "What! admit as a visitor in her family a
person whom she had never seen in her life before, and who, for anything
she knew, might be a swindler or a Jew! There was never anything so
preposterous--a woman, too, of Mrs. Sommers's judgment and propriety! It
was very--very strange." But whether it was very strange or not, the
fact is that the stranger soon spent most of his time at Violet Cottage;
and what is perhaps no less wonderful, notwithstanding his apparent
intimacy, he remained nearly as much a stranger to its inmates as ever.
His name, they had ascertained, was Burleigh--Frederick Burleigh; that
he was probably upwards of eight-and-twenty, and that, if he had ever
belonged to any profession, it must have been that of arms. But farther
they knew not. Mrs. Sommers, however, who to a well-cultivated mind
added a considerable experience of the world, did not take long to
discover that their new friend was, in every sense of the word, a man
whose habits and manners entitled him to the name and rank of a
gentleman; and she thought, too, that she saw in him, after a short
intercourse, many of those nobler qualities which raise the individual
to a high and well-merited rank among his species. As for Emily, she
loved his society she scarcely knew why; yet, when she endeavoured to
discover the cause, she found it no difficult matter to convince herself
that there was something about him so infinitely superior to all the men
she had ever seen that she was only obeying the dictates of reason in
admiring and esteeming him.

Her admiration and esteem continued to increase in proportion as she
became better acquainted with him, and the sentiments seemed to be
mutual. He now spent his time almost continually in her society, and it
never hung heavy on their hands. The stranger was fond of music, and
Emily, besides being mistress of her instrument, possessed naturally a
fine voice. Neither did she sing and play unrewarded; Burleigh taught
her the most enchanting of all modern la