Never shall I forget that wretched evening: oppressed by the anticipation of the unpleasant conference before me, and feeling the difficulty of my task with Egerton more strongly, as every moment showed me the spirit of self-satisfied devoteeism with which my brother and his allies seemed to shut out the non-elect from all sympathy or affection. There was a great deal of babble about the "Missionary cause," and advanced Christian and Evangelical views, and many more of the technical terms which made up their stock-in-trade; while my thoughts flew back to the real prayer I had heard poor Gilpin pour out when I lay, to all appearance, insensible, and hovering between life and death. I felt disgusted to observe that sleek, shiny Black trying to catch Egerton with a dun (religious) hackle, while he baited a small hook with a red one (of what he would call fashionable small talk) for me: of the two, I preferred the latter, for although far from what I ought to be, nothing is so revolting to my taste as the attempt to force solemn subjects into the trivialities of commonplace conversation. The longest and dreariest evening, and digression too, must come to an end: I pleaded the excuse of recent illness, and made my retreat, intimating to Egerton my wish for a private interview in the morning, to which he very readily assented. I sat musing over my fire until my candle was nearly burnt out, contrasting in my mind the dreary trio I had just left with the pleasant, warmhearted, unaffected little circle, amongst whom I had so lately mingled, a favoured and indulged member--"These people live, and are happy: they lead no useless unemployed existence either; but if Egerton's is the road to Heaven, _Dieu m'en preserve_. Oh, what a strange perversity of fate to make me the younger brother. Egerton would have made such an admirable curate, and married the best dowered of his congregation; he looks upon the 'accessories' of his position as so many hindrances to his advance in holiness, while I!--How well my poor mother's diamond tiara would look on Kate Vernon's rich brown hair!" I never thought I should feel so like a poltroon as I did when the library door closed on Egerton and myself. Never in the course of our lives had I asked or received a favour from him: not that any unkind feeling existed between us, but we had always been blanks to each other; and now to ask this frigid, pharisaical being, who so evidently thought there was a great gulf fixed between himself and the great mass of his fellow-creatures, to help me out of a scrape I ought never to have got into--to sympathise with my passionate admiration of a penniless girl! "You wished to speak to me, Frederic?" I may observe, Egerton was the only one I was ever intimate with who troubled himself to give me more than one syllable to my name. "Yes, I have a great deal to accuse myself of, Egerton, but, in short, I am in a scrape, and I want you to do a brotherly act, and help me out of it."