"Precisely."

“Then why don't you marry her yourself? You are not old, you are quite as good-looking as ever I remember you to have been, and she would sooner have you than ine. There would not be the same disparity in your ages. You know she is old enough to be my mother."

Then you are determined to thwart me in this?" "Most assuredly."

Take care, sir."

"I shall take very good care I don't marry Miss Granby. Come, don't let us quarrel; we quite understand one another. Tom will distinguish himself, and be taken back into favour again. You know he has got a commission in the Austrian army?"

"No. It is impossible. The regulations would not permit of it."

"Nothing is impossible to our aunt, the Princess, at Vienna, it seems. She has managed it. He is fiddling at the top of the tune there."

"With her money, I suppose?"

"So I suppose."

'He will ruin her, as he would have ruined me."

"I fear there is very little doubt of it."

"Can't you warn her."

"Yes, I can warn her, and so I can warn her brother, my most gracious father; and so I can warn the thorough-going Radicals: but with the same result in every case.'

"It is a bad business," said the Squire. "Your aunt is very foolish, Arthur. And she has got a very pretty bit of money of her own. She has a terrible slippery tongue, but she can't have a bad heart. Arthur, I believe she is very fond of me still, and I have not spoken a civil word to her this twenty years."

"More shame for you," said Arthur. Why can't you be kind to her? It is all nonsense, you know."

"Is it?" said the Squire. "Come, I wish you would drink some more of this wine; it is real Clos Vourgeot, of the first crus. I imported the hogshead with Cass of Northcote and Sir Charles Haselburn; you can get no such claret at Oxford."

"I am aware of it; but I take very little wine."

"I fear you don't take enough. What makes you so pale? You get paler year by year: sometimes you look quite ghastly."

"Yet I never look ill, do I? I work a great deal a very great deal and very much by night. In consequence of something a fellow-tutor said to me a few years ago, I determined to work mathematics up to the Cambridge standard, and I have done so. I am now examiner, and correcting the papers last term has pulled me down. Don't mention my health. I dislike it. I am perfectly well.” "On your honour?"

"On my honour. I have never had a day's illness since I was a boy. The reason I dislike the mention of it is that, to me, the loss of health would be such a hideous disaster." "I wish I could see you well married, Arthur."

"I thought we had done with Miss Granby,"

"So we have, if you like. One could as soon make water mix with oil as make you marry any one you did not like; unless you made it out to be your duty, and it don't seem to be part of your duty to obey your father. We will say nothing more about her. I should not object to any other, provided she was; provided she met your views, of course. Is there such a one?"

Arthur, usually so pale, was, in spite of himself, burning red as he answered steadily, "No."

"You are perfectly certain that you mean what you say, Arthur, and that there is no young lady whatsoever?" "I am perfectly certain," replied Arthur, looking his father steadily in the face, and getting by degrees less fiery hot about the ears. "There is no one whatever!"

"I am delighted to hear it," said the Squire. "It is a great relief to my mind. That sort of thing never does, depend upon it-- Well, I'll say no more. Now, can I do anything for you? You must want some money."

I don't want any money, thank you.

But I should be very glad if you would reconsider the measure of turning the widow Granmore and her sons out of their farm."

They shall stop in if you like, at your request."

"I only want justice done. I only want to see that you

don't do yourself more injustice with the country. What is your case?"

The Squire stated it eagerly and volubly-delighted to have a chance of justifying himself before a perfectly unbiassed person. "Case, sir? it is all on my side. I allowed her and three lubberly sons to keep the farm on after Granmore's death, on certain conditions as to crops and fences, not one of which has been fulfilled; they have neither brains, energy, or capital to fulfil them. She is ruining my land. She is destroying the capital on which she professes to be paying interest. She is living on me She is breaking every law of political economy; and I have given her notice. I cannot have my land destroyed by other people's widows: but, after all, it is as good as your land now, and, if you say let her stay, she shall stay. Only I warn you that, if you are going to manage the estate on these principles, you had better let me marry Miss Granby in real earnest, and accept a rent charge."

"Well," said Arthur, "in strict justice your case is a good one; she has certainly no more right to ruin your land than to pick your pocket. Send the baggage packing. You are only a capitalist, you know, and must, in mere honesty towards the State, behave as any other capitalist. If she is actually over-cropping the land, she ought to go on every ground. I am quite convinced." And so Arthur rose, whistling.

"Is there no middle course?" said the Squire, before he had reached the door.

66 "Eh?"

'Any middle course.

Nothing short of turning her out?" Oh yes, there is a middle course, if you think yourself justified in pursuing it. Renew her lease for a shorter term on more stringent conditions, and lend her some money at four per cent. to start with. She knows what she is about fast enough. That is a middle course. I don't recommend

it, or otherwise; I only point it out."

Well, I will follow your advice then, young sir. Is it the new fashion at Oxford to incur obligations and shirk out of the acknowledgment of them,-to persuade a man to do what you wish in such an ill-conditioned manner

I

that the obligation actually appears to be on your side? I will do as you wish, Arthur, and most humbly thank you for asking me."

Arthur left the room, and was gone about ten minutes. When he returned he came in very gravely, and laid his hand on the Squire's shoulder.

66

Father," he said, "I thank you very heartily for all your kindness to me, more particularly in this matter about the farm. I will, in everything, follow your wishes as far as they do not interfere with my private judgment. I have not behaved well to you to-night, and I ask your forgiveness."

CHAPTER XIX.

SOME OF ARTHUR'S PLANS FOR HIMSELF.

IT cost him something to say those last words, even to his own father.

How far can a man, even of the strongest will, succeed in curing the faults of his character? He may repress them, and hide them from the eyes of other people almost entirely, but they are there incubating. And when the moral system gets out of order, the moral gout gets twitching again. A man has generally contracted all the faults of character he will ever be plagued with this side of the grave before he is sixteen; some being hereditary, some coming through foolish education, and some through evil opportunity. The life of the most perfect saint would be the life of a man who by misfortune had found himself at years of discretion the heir to a noble crop of evil moral instincts, including of course the accursed root of the whole evil tree, selfishness; and yet who had succeeded, through all states of ill health, poverty, and the temptation of prosperity, in keeping them in repression; in never even betraying to the world the fact of the temptation; the fact of the evil disposition existing at

all; knowing himself to be often in wish a sinner, yet, acting throughout his life in every relation like a saint. Such a character is possible, and yet even of such a character one could not say that he had cured his worse instincts; one could only say that he had most nobly suppressed them.

There are those who hold the very noble and glorious belief that, through the grace of God, and the persistent imitation of Christ, evil instincts themselves become eradicated, and at the last that the soul itself quits the body in perfect accord with her Saviour. Of such a divine creed let us speak with reverence, and deep admiration. We have not to do with such great and deep matters here; but only to watch how circumstances acted on a clever man's habits of mind, changing them from time to time.

We were speaking of Arthur Silcote; a man who took pride in dextrously, and with shrewd common sense, steering clear of the Pantheists of those times on the one hand and the Tractarians on the other; and destructively snapping, bitterly enough at times, at the weak points of each; and constructively building up a most queer and adaptive form of orthodoxy, which the more advanced and embittered spirits on either side agreed (in that if in nothing else) would certainly get him a bishopric in the end.

He was no saint, although a man of perfect purity in morals, and one who made duty and self-sacrifice (as he thought) the first object of his life. If you told him that ambition and love of power were the mainspring of most of his actions, he would honestly admit it, and say coolly in addition that he felt himself fit for power, and that it was therefore his duty to acquire it. Continual and uninterrupted success from his very youth had developed in him that form of selfishness which we call self-confidence. He had, with his self-confidence, taken stock of this same vice among other, real and imaginary, imperfections, to be cured in his scheme of making himself a perfect and successful character; and, as Mr. Pip when he wrote out a schedule of his debts and left a margin, thought it was as good as paying them, so Arthur, when he wrote down