Nowhere, indeed, is the flower of loveliness more thickly sown than in that favoured part of our isle.  But all such young damsels as he had beheld had failed to move him; and if any shaft had been aimed at his breast it had fallen wide of the mark.  Jocelyn Mounchensey was not one of those highly susceptible natures—­quick to receive an impression, quicker to lose it.  Neither would he have been readily caught by the lures spread for youth by the designing of the sex.  Imbued with something of the antique spirit of chivalry, which yet, though but slightly, influenced the age in which he lived, he was ready and able to pay fervent homage to his mistress’s sovereign beauty (supposing he had one), and maintain its supremacy against all questioners, but utterly incapable of worshipping at any meaner shrine.  Heart-whole, therefore, when he encountered the Puritan’s daughter, he felt that in her he had found an object he had long sought, to whom he could devote himself heart and soul; a maiden whose beauty was without peer, and whose mental qualities corresponded with her personal attractions.

Nor was it a delusion under which he laboured.  Aveline Calveley was all his imagination painted her.  Purity of heart, gentleness of disposition, intellectual endowments, were as clearly revealed by her speaking countenance as the innermost depths of a fountain are by the pellucid medium through which they are viewed.  Hers was a virgin heart, which, like his own, had received no previous impression.  Love for her father alone had swayed her; though all strong demonstrations of filial affection had been checked by that father’s habitually stern manner.  Brought up by a female relative in Cheshire, who had taken charge of her on her mother’s death, which had occurred during her infancy, she had known little of her father till late years, when she had come to reside with him, and, though devout by nature, she could ill reconcile herself to the gloomy notions of religion he entertained, or to the ascetic mode of life he practised.  With no desire to share in the pomps and vanities of life, she could not be persuaded that cheerfulness was incompatible with righteousness; nor could all the railings she heard against them make her hate those who differed from her in religious opinions.  Still she made no complaint.  Entirely obedient to her father’s will, she accommodated herself, as far as she could, to the rule of life prescribed by him.  Aware of his pertinacity of opinion, she seldom or ever argued a point with him, even if she thought right might be on her side; holding it better to maintain peace by submission, than to hazard wrath by disputation.  The discussion on the May Games was an exception to her ordinary conduct, and formed one of the few instances in which she had ventured to assert her own opinion in opposition to that of her father.