I supposed he might allude to his future life. "What are you to be, Van Rheyn?" I inquired. "What profession, do you ask? I need not be any: I have enough fortune to be a rentier--I don't know what you call that in English; it means a gentleman who lives on his money. But I wish, myself, to be an English priest." "An English priest! Do you mean a parson?" "Yes, I mean that. So you see I must learn the English tongue. My mother used to talk to me about the priests in her land----" "Parsons, Van Rheyn." "I beg your pardon: I forget. And I fear I have caught up the French names for things since my mother died. It was neither priest nor parson she used to call the English ministers." "Clergymen, perhaps." "That was it. She said the clergymen were good men, and she should like me to be one. In winter, when it was cold, and she had some fire in her chamber, I used to sit up there with her, after coming home from classe, and we talked together, our two selves. I should have much money, she said, when I grew to be a man, and could lead an idle life. But she would not like that: she wanted me to be a good man, and to go to heaven when I died, where she would be; and she thought if I were a clergyman I should have serious thoughts always. So I wish to be a clergyman." He said all this with the utmost simplicity and composure, just as he might have spoken of going for a ride. There could be no mistaking that he was of a thoroughly straightforward and simple-minded nature. "It might involve your living over here, Van Rheyn: once you were in Orders." "Yes, I know. Papa would not mind. England was mamma's country, and she loved it. There was more peace in England than in France, she thought." "I say, she must have been a good mother, Van Rheyn." In a moment his grey eyes were shining at me through a mist of tears. "Oh, she was so good, so good! You can never know. If she had lived I should never have had sorrow." "What did she die of?" "Ah, I cannot tell. She was well in the morning, and she was dead at night. Not that she was strong ever. It was one Dimanche. We had been to the office, she and I----" "What office?"