‘My dearest, do you expect me to go into raptures with the beaten tracks and cockney lions of Switzerland, as poor little Daphne does? There is not a yard of the ground we have been passing over that I do not know by heart—that I have not seen under every condition of atmosphere, and in every variety of circumstances. You forget how many months of my life I wasted in balancing myself upon razor-edged _arrêtes_, and hewing my way up perpendicular peaks with an ice-axe. I cannot gush about these dear old familiar mountains, or fall into an ecstasy because the lakes are bluer and broader than our Avon.’ ‘I don’t expect you to be ecstatic, dear; I only want to know that you are happy, and that you take a healthy interest in life. I have been thinking lately that a man in your position ought to have a public career. Without public duties the life of a very rich man must inevitably be idle, since all his private duties are done by other people. And an idle life never yet was a happy one.’ ‘Spoken like a copy-book, my dearest,’ answered Gerald lightly. ‘Well, I own I have led an idle life hitherto, but some of it has been rather laborious idleness; as when I accomplished the passage of the Roththal Sattel and ascended yonder Jungfrau between sunrise and sundown; or when I came as near death as a man can come, and yet escape it, while climbing the Pointe des Ecrins, in the French Alps.’ ‘I want you by-and-by to think of another kind of labour, Gerald,’ said Lina, with tender seriousness. ‘I want you to think of doing good to your fellow-men—you, who are so gifted, and who have the means of carrying out every benevolent intention. I want you to be useful in your generation, and to win for yourself one of those great enduring names which are only won by usefulness.’ ‘Come now, my sweetest monitor, there you shoot beyond the mark. Surely Virgil and Horace, Dante and Shakespeare, have won names of wider glory than all the useful men who ever lived. That idea of usefulness has never had much charm for me. I have not a practical mind. I take after my mother, who was one of the lilies of the field, rather than after my father, who belonged to the toilers and spinners. If I had discovered in my nature any vein of the gold of poetry, I would have been willing to dig hard for that immortal ore; but as I can’t be a poet, I don’t care to be anything else.’ ‘And with your talents and your wealth you con be content to be nothing?’ exclaimed Lina, deeply shocked. ‘Nothing, except a tolerably indulgent landlord, a patron of the fine arts, on a small scale, and by-and-by, if you please—your—obedient—husband.’ The last words came somewhat slowly. ‘If you are happy, I am content,’ said Lina, with a sigh; ‘but it is because I fancy you are not happy that I urge you to lead a more active life, to give yourself greater variety of thought and occupation.’