literature; abstruse arguments—­whatever resembled a moral thesis, a political, religious, or philosophical lecture met with the sure ban of ridicule from them, as from the fair whose devoted cavaliers they were.  If they laughed, when it was safe and not impolitic to do so, at the ponderous elocution of the Northern barrister, they marvelled exceedingly more at Mabel’s indulgence of his attentions.  That a girl, who, in virtue of her snug fortune and attractive face, her blood and her breeding, might, as they put it, have the “pick of the county,” if she wanted a husband, should lend a willing ear to the pompous platitudes, the heavy rolling periods of this alien to her native State—­a man without grace of manner or beauty—­in their nomenclature, “a solemn prig,” defied all ingenuity of explanation, was an increasing wonder outlasting the prescribed nine days.  He rode with the ill assurance of one who, accustomed to the sawdust floor, treadmill round, and enclosing walls of a city riding-school, was bewildered by the unequal roads and free air of the breezy country.  He talked learnedly of hunting, quoting written authorities upon this or that point, of whom the unenlightened Virginians had never heard, much less read; equipped himself for the sport in a bewildering arsenal of new-fangled guns, game-bags, shot-pouches, and powder-horns, with numerous belts, diagonal, perpendicular, and horizontal, and in the field carried his gun a la Winkle; never, by any happy accident, brought down his bird, but was continually outraging sporting rules by firing out of time, and flushing coveys prematurely by unseasonable talking and precipitate strides in advance of his disgusted companions.

Yet he was not a fool.  In the discussion of graver matters—­politics, law, and history—­that arose in the smoking-room, he was not to be put down by more fluent tongues; demolished sophistry by solid reasoning, impregnable assertions, and an array of facts that might be prolix, but was always formidable—­in short, sustained fully the character ascribed to him by his brother-in-law, of a “thoroughly sensible fellow.”

“No genius, I allow!” Mr. Aylett would add, in speaking of his wife’s bantling among his compatriots, “but a man whose industry and sound practical knowledge of every branch of his profession will make for him the fortune and name genius rarely wins.”

With the younger ladies, his society was, it is superfluous to observe, at the lowest premium civility and native kindliness of disposition would permit them to declare by the nameless and innumerable methods in which the dear creatures are proficient.  To Rosa Tazewell he could not be anything better than a target for the arrows of her satire, or the whetstone, upon the unyielding surface of which she sharpened them.  But she showed her prudential foresight in never laughing at him when out of his sight, and in Mabel’s.  At long ago as the night of Mr. Aylett’s wedding-party