"The young gentleman," he said, "was sometimes heard speaking to himsell, and rampauging about in his room, just as if he was ane o' the player folk." Nothing, however, excepting this single circumstance, occurred to confirm Mr.Oldbuck's supposition; and it remained a high and doubtful question, what a well-informed young man, without friends, connections, or employment of any kind, could have to do as a resident at Fairport.
Neither port wine nor whist had apparently any charms for him.

He declined dining with the mess of the volunteer cohort which had been lately embodied, and shunned joining the convivialities of either of the two parties which then divided Fairport, as they did more important places.

He was too little of an aristocrat to join the club of Royal True Blues, and too little of a democrat to fraternise with an affiliated society of the soi-disant Friends of the People, which the borough had also the happiness of possessing.

A coffee-room was his detestation; and, I grieve to say it, he had as few sympathies with the tea-table .-- In short, since the name was fashionable in novel-writing, and that is a great while agone, there was never a Master Lovel of whom so little positive was known, and who was so universally described by negatives.
One negative, however, was important--nobody knew any harm of Lovel.
Indeed, had such existed, it would have been speedily made public; for the natural desire of speaking evil of our neighbour could in his case have been checked by no feelings of sympathy for a being so unsocial.

On one account alone he fell somewhat under suspicion.