Lester; but to Aram only, he manifested less the courtesy of kindness
than of respect. He took his arm, and leaning on it with a light touch,
led him to the group at the window. It was composed of the most
distinguished public men in the country, and among them (the Earl himself
was connected through an illegitimate branch with the reigning monarch,)
was a prince of the blood royal.

To these, whom he had prepared for the introduction, he severally, and
with an easy grace, presented Aram, and then falling back a few steps, he
watched with a keen but seemingly careless eye, the effect which so
sudden a contact with royalty itself would produce on the mind of the shy
and secluded Student, whom it was his object to dazzle and overpower. It
was at this moment that the native dignity of Aram, which his studies,
unworldly as they were, had certainly tended to increase, displayed
itself, in a trial which, poor as it was in abstract theory, was far from
despicable in the eyes of the sensible and practised courtier. He
received with his usual modesty, but not with his usual shrinking and
embarrassment on such occasions, the compliments he received; a certain
and far from ungraceful pride was mingled with his simplicity of
demeanour; no fluttering of manner, betrayed that he was either dazzled
or humbled by the presence in which he stood, and the Earl could not but
confess that there was never a more favourable opportunity for comparing
the aristocracy of genius with that of birth; it was one of those homely
every-day triumphs of intellect, which please us more than they ought to
do, for, after all, they are more common than the men of courts are
willing to believe.

Lord--did not however long leave Aram to the support of his own
unassisted presence of mind and calmness of nerve; he advanced, and led
the conversation, with his usual tact, into a course which might at once