"There, there, you foolish boy! I don't want thanks," cried she, coloring with pleasure though, as she spoke. "My only wish is to see you two children happy. I _am_ fond of you, Everett; I shall like to see you my son," she said. "I have tried to smooth the way for you, as far as I can, over the many difficulties that obstruct it; and I fancy I have succeeded. What do you say to my plan? When can you be ordained?" Everett sighed, as he released her hand, and looked at her face, now flushed with generous, kindly warmth. Well he knew the bitter change that would come over that face,--the passion of disappointment and displeasure which would follow his answer to that question. He could never enter the Church. Sorrowfully, but firmly, he said it,--with that calm, steady voice and look, of which all who knew him knew the significance. He could not take orders. Lady Beauchamp, at first utterly overwhelmed and dumfounded, stood staring at him in blank silence. Then she icily uttered a few words. His reasons,--might she ask? They were many, Everett said. Even if no other hindrance existed, in his own mind and opinions, his reverence for so sacred an office would not permit him to embrace it as a mere matter of worldly advantage to himself. "Grant me patience, young man! Do you mean to tell me you would decline this career because it promises to put an end to your difficulties? Are you _quite_ a fool?" the lady burst out, astonishment and anger quite startling her from all control. "Bear with what may at first seem to you only folly," Everett answered her, gently. "I don't think your calmer judgment can call it so. Would you have me take upon myself obligations that I feel to be most solemn and most vital, feeling myself unfitted, nay, unable, rightly to fulfil them? Would you have me commit the treachery to God and man of swearing that I felt called to that special service, when my heart protested against my profession?" "Romantic nonsense! A mere matter of modest scruples! You underrate yourself, Everett. You are the very man for a clergyman, trust me." But Everett went on to explain, that it was no question of under-estimation of himself. "You do not know, perhaps," he proceeded, while Lady Beauchamp, sorely tried, tapped her fingers on the table, and her foot upon the floor,--"you do not know, that, when I was a boy, and until two or three years ago, my desire and ambition were to be a minister of the Church of England." "Well, Sir,--what has made you so much better, or so much worse, since then, as to alter your opinion of the calling?"