"Reputation! Oh, yes! we give men like that--men of genius--a large property in the clouds, in order to justify ourselves in pushing them out of our way below. But if they are contented with fame, why, they deserve their fate. Hang fame,--give me power." "And is there no power in genius?" said Evelyn, with deepening fervour; "no power over the mind, and the heart, and the thought; no power over its own time, over posterity, over nations yet uncivilized, races yet unborn?" This burst from one so simple and young as Evelyn seemed to Vargrave so surprising that he stared on her without saying a word. "You will laugh at my championship," she added, with a blush and a smile; "but you provoked the encounter." "And you have won the battle," said Vargrave, with prompt gallantry. "My charming ward, every day develops in you some new gift of nature!" Caroline, with a movement of impatience, put her horse into a canter. Just at this time, from a cross-road, emerged a horseman,--it was Maltravers. The party halted, salutations were exchanged. "I suppose you have been enjoying the sweet business of squiredom," said Vargrave, gayly: "Atticus and his farm,--classical associations! Charming weather for the agriculturists, eh! What news about corn and barley? I suppose our English habit of talking on the weather arose when we were all a squirearchal farming, George-the-Third kind of people! Weather is really a serious matter to gentlemen who are interested in beans and vetches, wheat and hay. You hang your happiness upon the changes of the moon!" "As you upon the smiles of a minister. The weather of a court is more capricious than that of the skies,--at least we are better husbandmen than you who sow the wind and reap the whirlwind." "Well retorted: and really, when I look round, I am half inclined to envy you. Were I not Vargrave, I would be Maltravers." It was, indeed, a scene that seemed quiet and serene, with the English union of the feudal and the pastoral life,--the village-green, with its trim scattered cottages; the fields and pastures that spread beyond; the turf of the park behind, broken by the shadows of the unequal grounds, with its mounds and hollows and venerable groves, from which rose the turrets of the old Hall, its mullion windows gleaming in the western sun; a scene that preached tranquillity and content, and might have been equally grateful to humble philosophy and hereditary pride. "I never saw any place so peculiar in its character as Burleigh," said the rector; "the old seats left to us in England are chiefly those of our great nobles. It is so rare to see one that does not aspire beyond the residence of a private gentleman preserve all the relics of the Tudor age."