“I'm glad of it, heartily glad of it! Not that, as regarded myself, it mattered much where I was laid up in dock; but I find that this isolation, instead of drawing the members of my family more closely together, has but served to widen the breach between them. Lady Hester and Sydney rarely meet; George sees neither of them, and rarely comes near me, so that the sooner we go hence the better for all of us.” Grounsell gave a dry nod of assent, without speaking. “Sydney is very anxious to go and pass some time with her aunt Conway; but I foresee that, if I consent, the difference between Lady Hester and her will then become an irreconcilable quarrel. You don't agree with me, Grounsell?” “I do not. I never knew the ends of a fractured bone unite by grating them eternally against each other.” “And, as for George, the lounging habits of his service and cigars have steeped him in an indolence from which there is no emerging. I scarcely know what to do with him.” “It's hard enough to decide upon,” rejoined Grounsell; “he has some pursuits, but not one ambition.” “He has very fair abilities, certainly,” said Sir Stafford, half peevishly. “Very fair!” nodded Grounsell. “A good memory, a quick apprehension.” “He has one immense deficiency, for which nothing can compensate,” said the doctor, solemnly. “Application, industry?” “No, with his opportunities a great deal is often acquired with comparatively light labor. I mean a greater and more important element.” “He wants steadiness, you think?” “No; I 'll tell you what he wants, he wants pluck!” Sir Stafford's cheek became suddenly crimson, and his blue eyes grew almost black in the angry expression of the moment. “Pluck, sir? My son deficient in courage?” “Not as you understand it now,” resumed Grouusell, calmly. “He has enough, and more than enough, to shoot me or anybody else that would impugn it. The quality I mean is of a very different order. It is the daring to do a thing badly to-day in the certain confidence that you, will do it better to-morrow, and succeed perfectly in it this day twelvemonth. He has not pluck to encounter repeated failures, and yet return every morning to the attack; he has not pluck to be bullied by mediocrity in the sure and certain confidence that he will live to surpass it; in a word, he has not that pluck which resists the dictation of inferior minds, and inspires self-reliance through self-respect.” “I confess I cannot see that in the station he is likely to occupy such qualities are at all essential,” said Sir Stafford, almost haughtily. “Twenty thousand a year is a fine thing, and may dispense with a great many gifts in its possessor; and a man like myself, who never owned a twentieth of the amount, may be a precious bad judge of the requisites to spend it suitably; but I 'll tell you one thing, Onslow, that organ the phrenologists call 'Combativeness' is the best in the whole skull.”