The question was solved sooner than I thought. When everybody had left our pleasant breakfast-room but myself, and I, with my little basket of keys in my hand, was preparing to follow, Maurice, who had been lingering by the great window, startled me by asking for a few minutes’ conversation, “if I was quite at leisure.” I put down my basket with the utmost promptitude. Curiosity, if not courtesy, made me perfectly at leisure to hear anything he might have to say. “I have undertaken a very foolish office,” said Maurice--“I have had the supreme conceit and presumption of supposing that I could perhaps plead with you, Mrs. Crofton, the cause of a friend.” “I trust I shall feel sufficiently flattered,” said I, assuming the same tone. “And pray who is the friend who has the advantage of your support, Maurice? and what does he want of me?” The young man colored and looked affronted--he was highly sensitive to ridicule, like all self-regarding men. “Nay, pray don’t convince me so distinctly of my folly before I start,” he said; “the friend is a college friend of mine, who was so absurd as to marry before he had anything to live on; a very good fellow with--oh! don’t be afraid--perfectly sound views, I assure you, Mrs. Crofton, though he is acquainted with me.” “I should think being acquainted with you very likely to help a sensible man to sound views,” said I, with some natural spite, thankful for the opportunity of sending a private arrow into him in passing; “and what does your friend want that I can help him in?” “The Rector of Estcourt is an old man, and very ill,” said Maurice, after a pause of offence; “Owen, my friend, has a curacy in Simonborough. I told him I should venture--though of course aware I had not the slightest title to influence you--to name him to Mrs. Crofton, in case of anything happening.” “Aware that you have not the slightest title to influence me--that means, does it not, Maurice?” said I, “that you rather think you have some claim upon that Rectory at Estcourt, and that you magnanimously resign it in favor of your friend? It was your father’s--it is your mother’s desire to see you in his place--you have thought of it vaguely all your life as a kind of inheritance, which you were at liberty to accept or withdraw from; now, to be sure, we are very, very old friends--is not that plainly, and without any superfluity of words, what you mean?” Maurice made a still longer pause--he was seized with the restlessness common to men when they are rather hard tested in conversation. He got up unawares, picked up a book off the nearest table, as if he meant to answer me by means of that, and then returned to his chair. Then, after a little further struggle, he laughed, growing very red at the same time. “You put the case strongly, but I will not say you are wrong,” he answered; “after all, I believe, if it must be put into words, that is about how the thing stands; but, of course, you know I am perfectly aware”----