"Sometimes," said Gertrude, doubtfully. "He may do so, of course, but if he were my son I should be very unhappy about him. I should be very glad to see him grow stronger, poor boy, for his own sake and his mother's, but it looks to me very uncertain. That is just the trial, Beauchamp--the trial to me, I mean, of your position now--its uncertainty. Of course I cannot pretend that your interests are not for nearer and dearer to me than Roger's,"--she was too wise to attempt to speak any but her true feelings to one who knew her so well as her brother, even had she been addicted to protestations of disinterestedness, which she was not--"I cannot pretend that it would not be very delightful to me to see you the head of our family, the owner of this beautiful place, but my great dread for you is that of an uncertain position. If I could but have secured for you what would have placed you above very much caring how things here turn out! That is my great wish. That is what Mrs Chancellor has the comfort of feeling with regard to her daughters' future, whether Roger lives or dies." "Everything is uncertain," observed Beauchamp, "and there are some contingencies it is perhaps better not to think about." Mrs Eyrecourt looked at him inquiringly and a little suspiciously: she did not understand this new tone of philosophy of his. He went on speaking: "Not that I quite know what you are alluding to when you speak of placing my future above uncertainty?" He had a pretty shrewd notion what she was thinking of; her last few words had shown him that he was in for the "talking it over," the "advice" she had volunteered, and he felt anxious to hear all she had to say and have done with it. Gertrude hesitated. "Suppose we take a turn outside, up and down the avenue--it looks tempting, and it is woefully gloomy indoors," said Beauchamp, glancing round the room in which they were standing. It was a depressing room, a library crowded to excess with dingy volumes--many of them doubtless of great value, all of them originally handsome and well-bound, but bearing about them an unread, uncared-for look, filling the air with that faintly musty smell perceptible in libraries seldom entered but by servants, where fires are only lighted periodically to "keep out the damp," where the sweet summer air but seldom enters. Of all rooms, a library lived in and loved, where the books are dear old friends, the window-seats little sanctuaries for quiet thought or earnest study--of all rooms perhaps, such a one is the most delightful. But the library at Halswood had been deserted and disregarded for many a long day. The Chancellors were not a studious or scholarly race, still they were not without refinement and cultivation; but for many years past Halswood had been the home of a half imbecile old man whose only acute intelligence had been that of hoarding, and the traces of his long neglect were everywhere visible.