Mr. Weston was a widower, with an only son; the young gentleman was at this time at Yale College.  He had been absent for three years; and so anxious was he to graduate with honor, that he had chosen not to return to Virginia until his course of study should be completed.  The family had visited him during the first year of his exile, as he called it, but it had now been two years since he had seen any member of it.  There was an engagement between him and his cousin, though Alice was but fifteen when it was formed.  They had been associated from the earliest period of their lives, and Arthur declared that should he return home on a visit, he would not be able to break away from its happiness to the routine of a college life:  he yielded therefore to the earnest entreaties of his father, to remain at New Haven until he graduated.

Mr. Weston will stand for a specimen of the southern gentleman of the old school.  The bland and cheerful expression of his countenance, the arrangement of his soft fine hair, the fineness of the texture and the perfect cleanliness of every part of his dress, the plaiting of his old-fashioned shirt ruffles, the whiteness of his hand, and the sound of his clear, well-modulated voice—­in fact, every item of his appearance—­won the good opinion of a stranger; while the feelings of his heart and his steady course of Christian life, made him honored and reverenced as he deserved.  He possessed that requisite to the character of a true gentleman, a kind and charitable heart.

None of the present members of his family had any lawful claim upon him, yet he cherished them with the utmost affection.  He requested his brother’s widow, on the death of his own wife, to assume the charge of his house; and she was in every respect its mistress.  Alice was necessary to his happiness, almost to his existence; she was the very rose in his garden of life.  He had never had a sister, and he regarded Alice as a legacy from his only brother, to whom he had been most tenderly attached:  had she been uninteresting, she would still have been very dear to him; but her beauty and her many graces of appearance and character drew closely together the bonds of love between them; Alice returning, with the utmost warmth, her uncle’s affection.

Mrs. Weston was unlike her daughter in appearance, Alice resembling her father’s family.  Her dark, fine eyes were still full of the fire that had beamed from them in youth; there were strongly-marked lines about her mouth, and her face when in repose bore traces of the warfare of past years.  The heart has a writing of its own, and we can see it on the countenance; time has no power to obliterate it, but generally deepens the expression.  There was at times too a sternness in her voice and manner, yet it left no unpleasant impression; her general refinement, and her fine sense and education made her society always desirable.