"Temperance is a canny virtue; and I would recommend moderation in all things, after the teaching of the Apostle Paul. Yet I am glad to find, Mr. Rivers, you have your feet upon the floor. It will be well for your estates, at the preservation and improvement of which I and my kin have laboured--not unfaithfully--for three generations." "So long as that?" the young man ejaculated. The statement indirectly suggested a former strain of thought. "Yes, for three generations--and not without trials. For I would have you understand that a certain impracticability runs in your family, Mr. Rivers--a perversity, not sinful altogether, but very wearing to those that have your temporal interests at heart." Gently Laurence blew a little cloud out of his nostrils, and watched it float upward across the dark, warm-hued landscape by Nicholas Poussin hanging over the chimney-piece. Against the windows the rain beat, while the heavy folds of the crimson, damask curtains, covering them, swayed just perceptibly in the draught. "I can believe it," he said. "My people have been afflicted with ideas; and ideas play the very mischief with business, don't they, Armstrong?" "In their degree, and subject to a thrifty discretion in their application, I would not wholly condemn them," the agent replied. His shrewd glance dwelt on the younger man with undisguised pleasure. He was so handsome, well bred, well made, and apparently so able a fellow.--"But ideas are kittle cattle, Mr. Rivers," he continued, "needing strenuous supervision if you would not have them break out of pasture and run mad, sairly to the dislocation of all legitimate traffic. And it has been the affliction of more than one member of your family to let his ideas run abroad to a length of pernicious extravagance. For instance, my grandfather, a person of capacity and circumspection beyond the average, was factor to your great uncle, Mr. Dudley Rivers, and--" Laurence kept his eyes fixed on the last blue of the little smoke-cloud curling about the intricate foliations of the upper corner of the picture frame; yet his voice had a certain quickness and vibration in it as he exclaimed-- "Ah! Dudley Rivers--yes. Well, how about him, Armstrong?"