Lord Cairnforth was a long time before he suffered himself to be drawn in likewise; but the business which detained him in Edinburg grew more and more tedious; he found difficulties arise on every hand, and yet he was determined not to leave until he had done all he wanted to do.  Not only in money, but by personal influence, which, now that he tried to use it, he found was considerable, he furthered, in many ways, the interests of Mr. Menteith’s sons.  The widow, too, a gentle, helpless woman, soon discovered where to come to, on all occasions, for counsel and aid.  Never had the earl led such a busy life—­one more active, as far as his capabilities allowed.

Still, now and then time hung on his hands, and he felt a great lack of companionship, until, by degrees, his name and a good deal of his history got noised abroad, and he was perfectly inundated with acquaintances.  Of course, he had it at his own option how much or how little he went out into the world.  Every advantage that rank or fortune could give was his already; but he had another possession still—­his own as much here as in the solitudes of Cairnforth, the art of making himself “weel likit.”  The mob of “good society,” which is not better than any other mob, will run after money, position, talent, beauty, for a time; but it requires a quality higher and deeper than these, and distinct from them all, to produce lasting popularity.

This the earl had.  In spite of his infirmities, he possessed the rare power of winning love, of making people love him for his own sake.  At first, of course, his society was sought from mere curiosity, or even through meaner motives; but gradually, like the good clergyman with whom

   “Fools who came to scoff remained to pray,”

Those who visited him to stare at, or pity a fellow-creature so afflicted, remained, attached by his gentleness, his patience, his wonderful unselfishness.  And some few, of noble mind, saw in him the grandest and most religious spectacle that men can look upon—­a human soul which has not suffered itself to be conquered by adversity.

Very soon the earl gathered round him, besides acquaintances, a knot of real friends, affectionate and true, who, in the charm of his cultivated mind, and the simplicity of his good heart, found ample amends for every thing that nature had denied him, the loss of which he bore so cheerfully and uncomplainingly.

By-and-by, induced by these, the excellent people whom, as by mesmeric attraction, goodness soon draws to itself, he began to go out a little into society.  It could be done, with some personal difficulty and pain, and some slight trouble to his friends, which last was for a long time his chief objection; for a merciful familiarity with his own affliction had been brought about by time, and by the fact that he had never known any other sort of existence, and only, as a blind person guesses at colors, could speculate