“Ah, Clare--but I have so many children to provide for!” cried poor Mrs. Harley, with a gush of tears. This silenced me, and I said no more. But Mrs. Harley had not exhausted her budget of complaints. “And Maurice,” said this unfortunate mother; “after the education he has had, and all the money and pains that have been expended on him--Maurice, I do believe, Mrs. Crofton, will do something violent one of these days; he will go into business, or,” with another outburst of tears, “set himself to learn a trade.” “Surely nothing quite so bad as that,” said I, with as much sympathy as I could summon up. “Ah, you don’t know how he speaks--if you could only hear him; and the troubles in India and this last dreadful news have had such an effect upon Maurice,” said Mrs. Harley; “you would suppose, to hear him speak, that the poor soldiers had suffered all the more because he was doing nothing. Such nonsense! And instead of going into the Church in a proper and dignified manner, like his dear father, I see nothing better for it but that he’ll make a tradesman of himself.” “But it would be satisfactory to see him doing something for himself--improving his own position; he can never settle and make a home for himself while he has only his Fellowship. Don’t you think Maurice is right?” said I, keeping up the conversation from mere politeness, and already sufficiently tired of the interruption it made. “He has his mother’s house,” said Mrs. Harley, a little sharply, “and he has the position of a gentleman,” she added a moment after, in a faltering, apologetic tone. Good, troubled woman! She had come to that age of conflicting interests when the instincts of the heart do not always guide true. She wanted--very naturally--to see her daughter provided for; and so, if she could, would have persuaded Alice into an unwilling marriage. She could not bear to see her son derogating from the “position” which his father’s son ought to fill; and as he would not go into the Church, she would fain have condemned the young man to shrivel up into the dreary dignity of a College Don. Poor Mrs. Harley!--that was all that the philosophy of the affections instructed her to do. She had scarcely left me half an hour when I was startled by the appearance of the Rector. He was grave and pale, held my hand in his tight grasp, and made his professions of sympathy all very properly and in good taste. But his looks and his tone aggravated a sick impatience of sympathy which began to grow about my heart. I began to comprehend how people in deep and real grief, might grow disgusted with the conventional looks expected from them, and learn an almost levity of manner, to forestall those vulgar, dreary sympathies; and this sympathy, too, covered something very different--something a great deal nearer to the Rector’s heart.