'You are too metaphysical for me, Mary;' and he would fain have smiled. 'I want you to be hopeful. Half the object would be attained if you were, and he really deserves that you should.' 'He will not let me. If I hope at one moment, I am disappointed the next.' 'And how? By nothing worse than boyishness. You confirm what my aunt tells me, that there has never been a serious complaint of him.' 'Never. His conduct has always been blameless; but every tutor has said the same--that he has no application, and allows himself to be surpassed by any one of moderate energy!' 'Blameless conduct! How many fathers would give worlds to be able to give such a character of a son!' 'There are faults that are the very indications of a manly spirit,' began the Earl, impatiently. 'Not that I mean that I wish--he has never given me any trouble--but just look at James Frost, and you would see what I mean! There's energy in him--fire--independence; you feel there is substance in him, and like him the better for having a will and way of his own.' 'So, I think, has Louis; but it is so often thwarted, that it sinks away under the sense of duty and submission.' 'If there were any consistency or reason in his fancies, they would not give way so easily; but it is all talk, all extravagant notions--here one day, gone the next. Not a spark of ambition!' 'Ambition is not so safe a spark that we should wish to see it lighted.' 'A man must wish to see his son hold his proper station, and aim high! No one can be satisfied to see him a trifler.' 'I have been trying to find out why he trifles. As far as I can see, he has no ambition, and I do not think his turn will be for a life like yours. His bent is towards what is to do good to others. He would make an admirable country gentleman.' 'A mere farmer, idling away his time in his fields.' 'No; doing infinite good by example and influence, and coming forward whenever duty required it. Depend upon it, the benefit to others is the impulse which can work on Louis, not personal ambition. Birth has already given him more than he values.' 'You may be right,' said Lord Ormersfield, 'but it is hard to see so many advantages thrown away, and what sometimes seems like so much ability wasted. But who can tell? he is never the same for an hour together.' 'May it not be for want of a sphere of wholesome action?' 'He is not fit for it, Mary. You know I resolved that the whole burthen of our losses should fall on me; I made it my object that he should not suffer, and should freely have whatever I had at the same age. Everything is cleared at last. I could give him the same income as I started in life with; but he is so reckless of money, that I cannot feel justified in putting it into his hands. Say what I will, not a vacation occurs but he comes to tell me of some paltry debt of ten or fifteen pounds.'