"It's all right, Frank; it is indeed," said Gerald, earnestly. "I am doing very well now and am likely to do better. I shall go over my affairs with you some day soon to satisfy you. I could easily make your income larger, but perhaps it is as well for you to begin moderately. You'll have to restrict your charities a little, you know, when you have a wife to think of." "Yes, I know that," replied the curate; "but, Gerald, you should look to home too. You will be marrying yourself." "It is not likely," said Mr Thurston. "I am thirty-one--seven years older than you, Frank; getting past the marrying _age_, you see." Frank wondered a little, but said nothing, and went on to talk of other things. Suddenly a casual mention of the Dalrymples struck Gerald with a flash of remembrance. "Is not that Captain Chancellor we met to-night a friend of theirs?" he asked his brother. "Yes; I believe Mr Laurence and Eugenia met him there, and I am not at all sure that it wouldn't have been a great deal better if they had not done so," replied the young clergyman, oracularly. "Eugenia isn't a bad sort of girl; she is well-meaning, and not stupid, and certainly very pretty; but I must say she is very childish and silly. She is constantly in extremes, always running full tilt against something or other. For my part, I confess I can't make her out. I am uncommonly glad Sydney is so completely unlike her. I didn't at all admire the way she allowed herself to be monopolised by that Captain Chancellor to-night. If they had a mother it would be different, but Mr Laurence would never see anything of that kind if it was straight before his eyes." "You are rather unreasonable, I think, Frank," said Gerald. "Such things will happen, you know. I suppose there have been occasions on which Sydney too has allowed herself to be monopolised. You would have thought it very hard if any one had objected." "The cases are thoroughly different," replied the younger Thurston. "I should very much doubt this man's being in earnest."