Soon after Mr. Burton became a member of Mrs. Darlington’s household, he began to show particular attentions to Miriam, who was in her nineteenth year, and was, as we have said, a gentle, timid, shrinking girl.  Though she did not encourage, she would not reject the attentions of the polite and elegant stranger, who had so much that was agreeable to say that she insensibly acquired a kind of prepossession in his favor.

As now constituted, the family of Mrs. Darlington was not so pleasant and harmonious as could have been desired.  Mr. Scragg had already succeeded in making himself so disagreeable to the other boarders that they were scarcely civil to him; and Mrs. Grimes, who was quite gracious with Mrs. Scragg at first, no longer spoke to her.  They had fallen out about some trifle, quarreled, and then cut each other’s acquaintance.  When the breakfast, dinner, or tea bell rang, and the boarders assembled at the table, there was generally, at first, an embarrassing silence.  Scragg looked like a bull-dog waiting for an occasion to bark; Mrs. Scragg sat with her lips closely compressed and her head partly turned away, so as to keep her eyes out of the line of vision with Mrs. Grimes’s face; while Mrs. Grimes gave an occasional glance of contempt towards the lady with whom she had had a “tiff.”  Barling and Mason, observing all this, and enjoying it, were generally the first to break the reigning silence; and this was usually done by addressing some remark to Scragg, for no other reason, it seemed, than to hear his growling reply.  Usually, they succeeded in drawing him into an argument, when they would goad him until he became angry; a species of irritation in which they never suffered themselves to indulge.  As for Mr. Grimes, he was a man of few words.  When spoken to, he would reply; but he never made conversation.  The only man who really behaved like a gentleman was Mr. Burton; and the contrast seen in him naturally prepossessed the family in his favor.

The first three months’ experience in taking boarders was enough to make the heart of Mrs. Darlington sick.  All domestic comfort was gone.  From early morning until late at night, she toiled harder than any servant in the house; and, with all, had a mind pressed down with care and anxiety.  Three times during this period she had been obliged to change her cook, yet, for all, scarcely a day passed that she did not set badly-cooked food before her guests.  Sometimes certain of the boarders complained, and it generally happened that rudeness accompanied the complaint.  The sense of pain that attended this was always most acute, for it was accompanied by deep humiliation and a feeling of helplessness.  Moreover, during these first three months, Mr. and Mrs. Grimes had left the house without paying their board for five weeks, thus throwing her into a loss of forty dollars.