later years he was ready to acknowledge, so many of the elements of happiness. That he did not so endeavour to escape was owing partly to the affection of Horace Vavasour for his sisters, who were wont to protest with tears that they could not endure their fate if he, the only one who kept their house alive, were to desert them; and partly to the _habit_ of submission which had grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength. Before Lady Millicent’s second son also there was a road in life marked out--a point in the horizon on which his eyes and hopes were fixed. That point in the future was the competitive examination for which he had been so long and diligently preparing himself; that road in life was the one that led, through mental effort, as a “government servant,” to distinction. The career chosen for Horace Vavasour was that of a “public man;” how far an almost strictly private education was calculated to fit him for that career may remain an open question. CHAPTER VII. LADY MILLICENT CONDESCENDS. Family prayers were over at the Castle. The ladies and gentlemen, who I fear were very little the better for the ceremony, and the servants, who, if they prayed at that time in the morning at all, would probably have infinitely preferred doing so in their so-called “closets” than under the eyes of their employers, had each and all risen from their knees; and breakfast, never much of a meal, according to the young men’s view of the matter, was in progress. “A fine day for the wedding, eh?” remarked Arthur. “I’m glad you’re going, ma’am; John is one of the best fellows going. I owe him some attention for teaching me to ride. A deuced stick, too, I was at first, and a precious deal of trouble I gave him. There is nothing like beginning early though, and John was as patient as--” “Well, as patient as what, or who?” asked Lady Millicent, noticing that he hesitated--she being one who, in the smallest as well as the most important occasions of life, never obeyed the valuable rule, _Glissez mortels, mats n’appuyez pas_. “O, I don’t know!” replied Arthur, who hated having what he said investigated--torn into threads, as he called it--by his lady mother. “Nothing particular. I believe, though, that I was going to say--as a woman.” “I daresay,” sneered Lady Millicent; “your experience in that line has been too extensive for the simile not to strike you at once.”