A few days after this conversation, Mark Hurdlestone met Elinor Wildegrave by accident, and became deeply enamoured with the lovely orphan.

In spite of his blunt speech and misanthropic manners, the young heir of Oak Hall, at that period, was not wholly destitute of the art of pleasing.  He was sensible and well-read.  His figure was commanding, and his carriage good.  His stern features were set off by the ruddy glow of health; and the brilliancy of his lip and eye, the dazzling whiteness of his small even teeth, and the rich masses of raven hair that curled in profusion round his high forehead, atoned in some measure for the disagreeable expression which at all times pervaded his remarkable countenance.

“The young Squire is certainly very handsome,” said Elinor Wildegrave to her mother, the morning after their first meeting.  “But there is something about him which I cannot like.  His face is as stern and as cold as a marble statue’s.  I should think it would be impossible for that man to shed a tear, or be capable of feeling the least tender emotion.”

“My dear Elinor, you judge too much by externals.  These taciturn people are often possessed of the keenest sensibility.”

“Ah! dearest mother, believe it not.  ’From the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh.’  I love not these silent people.  The heart that is worn on the sleeve is better, and more to be trusted, than the heart that is concealed in a marble shell.”

The human countenance never lies.  If read aright, it always presents the real index of the mind.  The first impression it makes upon a stranger is always the correct one.  Pleasing manners and affable smiles may tend to weaken, nay, even to efface these first impressions, but they will invariably return, and experience will attest their truth.

In her first estimate of the Squire’s character, formed from his physiognomy, Elinor was correct, for it was some time before she could reconcile herself to his harsh countenance; but her dislike gradually wore away, and she received his passing civilities with the pleasure which a young girl of her age invariably feels, when regarded with admiration by one so much her superior in rank and fortune.

His retired habits, which at the age of twenty-four his neighbors attributed more to pride than avarice, though in truth they arose from a mixture of both, invested him with a sort of mysterious interest.  Elinor felt her vanity flattered by the belief that her charms had touched a heart hitherto invulnerable to female beauty.  She was, indeed, his first love, and his last.

Elinor was too romantic to think of uniting herself to a man whom she could not love, for the sake of his wealth; and she prudently and honorably shunned the advances of her taciturn admirer.  She knew that his father had been her father’s implacable enemy; that all intimacy between the families had been strictly prohibited at the Hall; and when the heir of that noble demesne made their cottage a resting-place after the fatigues of hunting, and requested a draught of milk from her hands to allay his thirst, or a bunch of roses from her little flower plot to adorn his waistcoat, Elinor answered his demands with secret mistrust and terror; although, with the coquetry so natural to her sex, she could not hate him for the amiable weakness of regarding her with admiration.