“Really,” thought Colonel Monk to himself as he took off his dress-shoes and, with military precision, set them side by side beneath a chair, “it does seem a little hard on me that I should be responsible for a son who is in love with a damned, unworkable electrical machine. And with his chances—with his chances! Why he might have been a second secretary in the Diplomatic Service by now, or anything else to which interest could help him. And there he sits hour after hour gabbling down a little trumpet and listening for an answer which never comes—hour after hour, and month after month, and year after year. Is he a genius, or is he an idiot, or a moral curiosity, or simply useless? I’m hanged if I know, but that’s a good idea about Mary; though, of course, there are things against it. Curious that I should never have considered the matter seriously before—because of the cousinship, I suppose. Would she have him? It doesn’t seem likely, but you can never know what a woman will or will not do, and as a child she was very fond of Morris. At any rate the situation is desperate, and if I can, I mean to save the old place, for his sake and our family’s, as well as my own.” He went to the window, and, lifting a corner of the blind, looked out. “There he is, still staring at the sea and the sky, and there I daresay he will be till dawn. I bet he has forgotten all about Mary now, and is thinking of his electrical machine. What a curiosity! Good heavens; what a curiosity! Ah, I wonder what they would have made of him in my old mess five and thirty years ago?” And quite overcome by this reflection, the Colonel shook his grizzled head, put out the candle, and retired to rest. His father was right. The beautiful September dawn was breaking over the placid sea before Morris brushed the night dew from his hair and cloak, and went in by the abbot’s door. What was he thinking of all the time? He scarcely knew. One by one, like little clouds in the summer sky, fancies arose in his mind to sail slowly across its depth and vanish upon an inconclusive and shadowy horizon. Of course, he thought about his instruments; these were never absent from his heart. His instinct flew back to them as an oasis, as an island of rest in the wilderness of his father’s thorny and depressing conversation. The instruments were disappointing, it is true, at present; but, at any rate, they did not dwell gloomily upon impending ruin or suggest that it was his duty to get married. They remained silent, distressingly silent indeed.