"I think, Mother," he said at length, "that I had chosen to go through with it. I learned lessons in Little Ease that, if I had lacked now, I had been sorely wanting to my people; and--speaking as a man--that perchance I could have learned nowhere else." "Childre," responded the aged mother, "it seemeth me, that of all matter we have need to learn, the last and hardest is to give God leave to choose for us. At least, thus it hath been with me; it may be I mistake to say it is for all. Yet I am sure he is the happy man that learneth it soon. It hath taken me well-nigh eighty years. Thou art better, Robin, to have learned it in fifty." "I count, Mother, we learn not all lessons in the same order," said the Rector, smiling, "though there be many lessons we must all learn. 'Tis not like to be my last,--without I should die to-morrow--if I have learned it thoroughly now. And 'tis easier to leave in God's hands, some choices than other." Mrs Rose did not ask of what he was thinking, but she could guess pretty well. It would be harder to lose his Thekla now, than if he had come out of Little Ease and had found her dead: harder to lose Arthur in his early manhood, than to have seen him coffined with his baby brother and sisters, years ago. Mrs Tremayne drew a long sigh, as if she had guessed it too. "It would be easier to leave all things to God's choice," she said, "if only we dwelt nearer God." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. "Vuesa merced," the epithet of ordinary courtesy, is literally "Your Grace." CHAPTER SEVEN. A SPOKE IN THE WHEEL. "All the foolish work Of fancy, and the bitter close of all." _Tennyson_. A few weeks after that conversation, Lucrece Enville sat alone in the bedroom which she shared with her sister Margaret. She was not shedding tears--it was not her way to weep: but her mortification was bitter enough for any amount of weeping. Lucrece was as selfish as her step-mother, or rather a shade more so. Lady Enville's selfishness was pure love of ease; there was no deliberate malice in it. Any person who stood in her way might be ruthlessly swept out of it; but those who did not interfere with her pleasure, were free to pursue their own. The selfishness of Lucrece lay deeper. She not only sought her own enjoyment and aggrandisement; but she could not bear to see anything-- even if she did not want it--in the possession of some one else. That was sufficient to make Lucrece long for it and plot to acquire it, though she had no liking for the article in itself, and would not know what to do with it when she got it. But in this particular instance she had wanted the article: and she had missed it. True, the value which she set upon it was rather for its adjuncts than for itself; but whatever its value, one thought was uppermost, and was bitterest--she had missed it.