“Nothing,” said General Brandon, impressively, “should be or is, in this country, out of reach of any man with brains and solid worth.” The General himself was an aristocrat from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet, but he never dreamed of it. “And some education,” added Clavering. He knew his man thoroughly. “Brains are the first requisite, and solid worth is all very well. But a man must have some other qualifications. A man must know something beyond the common school of his youth and the bigger common school of his manhood, in order to make a lasting impression on his time. Of course I don’t include geniuses in this category, but men of talent only. I have not what I call education, but I have the next best thing to it. I know my own limitations. I have a boy on whom I shall put a twenty–thousand–dollar education, but I am very much afraid that he is a twenty–dollar boy.” General Brandon did not exactly understand this, and Clavering said no more about his boy. They walked off together, and in a little while they were seated in the lobby of an up–town hotel and Clavering was telling the story of his life—or what he chose to tell of it—to General Brandon. It was not an instinctive outpouring of the truth, but as a matter of fact Clavering was rehearsing for the rôle he intended to play in a few years’ time,—that of the rich man who has hewn his way through a great forest of difficulties and has triumphed in the end. He was astute enough not to despise men of General Brandon’s stamp, simple, quiet, brave, having little knowledge of affairs but perfectly versed in ethics. Clavering in short knew the full value of a gentleman, although he was not one himself. They sat late, and when the General reached his own door in a tall old house far up town, Elizabeth was just descending from Mrs. Luttrell’s carriage, escorted by Richard Baskerville. “Oh, papa,” she said, running up the steps, her white muslin skirts floating behind her, “I have had the most glorious evening.” She was quite unaware that the hour of fate had struck for her, and that she had entered the portals of destiny—a new and strange destiny. _Chapter Two_