Towneley belonged to one of the most exclusive sets in Cambridge,
and was perhaps the most popular man among the whole number of
undergraduates. He was big and very handsome- as it seemed to Ernest
the handsomest man whom he ever had seen or ever could see, for it was
impossible to imagine a more lively and agreeable countenance. He
was good at cricket and boating, very good-natured, singularly free
from conceit, not clever but very sensible, and, lastly, his father
and mother had been drowned by the overturning of a boat when he was
only two years old and had left him as their only child and heir to
one of the finest estates in the South of England. Fortune every now
and then does things handsomely by a man all round; Towneley was one
of those to whom she had taken a fancy, and the universal verdict in
this case was that she had chosen wisely.
Ernest had seen Towneley as everyone else in the University (except,
of course, dons) had seen him, for he was a man of mark, and being
very susceptible he had liked Towneley even more than most people did,
but at the same time it never so much as entered his head that he
should come to know him. He liked looking at him if he got a chance,
and was very much ashamed of himself for doing so, but there the
matter ended.
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