Agnes said no more, but went up to her little white room completely unconvinced upon the subject. Miss Willsie saw the tell-tale light in this little high window in the middle of the night--when it was nearly daylight, the old lady said--throwing a friendly gleam upon the two young controversialists as they debated this difficult question. Agnes, of course, with all the heat of youth and innovation, took the extreme side of the question. “It is easy enough to write--any one can write,” said the young author, triumphant in her argument, yet in truth somewhat mortified by her triumph. “But even if it was not, there are greater things in this world than books, and almost all other books are greater than novels; and I do think it was the most foolish thing in the world to suppose that clever people like these--for they were all clever people--would take any notice of me.” To which arguments, all and several, Marian returned only a direct, unhesitating, and broad negative. It was _not_ easy to write, and there were _not_ greater things than books, and it was not at all foolish to expect a hundred times more than ever their hopes had expected. “It is very wrong of you to say so, Agnes,” said Marian. “Papa is quite right; it will all be as different as possible by-and-by; and if you have nothing more sensible to say than that, I shall go to sleep.” Saying which, Marian turned round upon her pillow, virtuously resisted all further temptations, and closed her beautiful eyes upon the faint grey dawn which began to steal in between the white curtains. They thought their minds were far too full to go to sleep. Innocent imaginations! five minutes after, they were in the very sweetest enchanted country of the true fairyland of dreams. While Charlie, in his sleep in the next room, laboriously struggled all night with a bloodless apparition, which smiled at him from an open doorway--fiercely fought and struggled against it--mastered it--got it down, but only to begin once more the tantalising combat. When he rose in the morning, early as usual, the youth set his teeth at the recollection, and with an attempt to give a reason for this instinctive enmity, fiercely hoped that Lord Winterbourne would try to take from his father his little inheritance. Charlie, who was by no means of a metaphysical turn, did not trouble himself at all to inquire into the grounds of his own unusual pugnacity. He “knew he owed him something,” and though my Lord Winterbourne was a viscount and an ex-minister, and Charlie only a poor man’s son and a copying-clerk, he fronted the great man’s image with indomitable confidence, and had no more doubt of his own prowess than of his entire goodwill in the matter. He did not think very much more of his opponent in this case than he did of the big folios in the office, and had as entire confidence in his own ability to bring the enemy down.