“Ah!” she cried in a tone of relief; and then with a perceptible ease and calm of indifference, “about yourself? I hope it is something very good, very delightful, something equal to your deserts. There is nothing I could be so happy to hear.” “Something of that to begin with,” he said, and told her of the advantages that had come to him; his appointment on the Commission, and his first important brief. Lady Curtis was delighted, as she had promised to be. She threw herself into the discussion of his prospects with enthusiasm. “I am as glad as I could be of anything, except good fortune to Arthur,” she said. “My dear Lewis, you who have been so good to us all! you come next. And now all the world is before you, and everything that is good. Thank God for it! though I never had any doubt on the subject,” she said, smiling at him through tears of pleasure, as she held both his hands. How cheering this was! sympathy could not be more warm, more cordial, more affectionate. It warmed his heart, and brought the tears to his own eyes. “Yes,” he said, “it is the beginning, I believe, and hope--. It is the opening of the door. My career ought to be clear now, if I have courage and heart to go on.” “You, courage and heart!” she said, “of course you will have both, Lewis. You are not the kind of man that fails. I never for a moment expected anything else. It is not always, to be sure, that men get what they deserve; but you--you are not of the mettle which fails.” “But supposing that, and that I succeed, what is it to lead to, Lady Curtis?” he asked, half-mournfully; for it was evident to him that, as yet, she had not even the least glimmer of imagination as to what he was going to ask. “Lead to?” she said; “the Bench of course, and perhaps the woolsack; you speak so little of yourself that I scarcely know which way your ambitions lie, Lewis, whether you care for politics at all; of course that is the finer career of the two--if you take to it.” “That is all you give me then,” he said, “my choice of two dignities? I do not say they are not both great objects of ambition; but is there nothing sweeter, nothing dearer to come, my lady? You are very kind to me--kinder than I had any right to expect; but have you nothing more to wish me in your kind heart than the woolsack and the Bench?” She looked at him, faltering a little. She began now to see what he meant. “What can I say more?” she said, “yes, everything, Lewis. I wish you all--you can desire.” “The desire of my heart,” he said, getting up from his seat in his agitation; “that is the wish in the Psalms, and there is none that goes so far, or is so sweet. My lady, you have known me almost ever since I was fit to form a wish. Don’t you know what it is--the desire of my heart?”