"Don't be displeased, uncle," said Horace, changing his tone, and suffering only a little impatience, to testify to the fury with which he heard himself reproved. "You know better than I do, that women are tame creatures, and content themselves easily in their own sphere, when they don't know any better. Susan has leisure to form little plans and fancies, I believe. I have no such thing--the pain of years has brought me to one point of desperation. I know nothing of the world: I don't know what I am--my position--my prospects--my birth, are all a mist to me. My mind is not sufficiently disengaged to form projects; therefore I say I have no inclinations--the air stifles me--I must get out into the world, where there is room to breathe!" "Then, why," said the Colonel, "have you not gone away before?" Horace was silenced--he fumed with silent rage within himself, wounded in the tenderest point of his self-love and pride--it was, perhaps, the only suggestion which could have made him feel a pang of humiliation. It was one which Susan herself, in her simple and practical intelligence, had made more than once. Why had he borne and brooded over his wretchedness? Why had he not gone away? "Many young men," said Colonel Sutherland, "have left home of their own accord on a less argument than that of desperation. I don't mean to say I approve of it--but--there are some things that one could not advise, which, at the same time, being done, cut a difficulty which might be hard to solve. I say all this, my dear boy," added the Colonel, moved by Horace's gloomy face, "to show you that it is foolish to use such strong expressions: if your _desperation_ had been so great as to deprive you of all choice or inclination, depend upon it you would have gone away." And having delivered himself of this kindly bit of logic, totally inapplicable as it was to the person whom he addressed, and attributing the silence of his nephew to the natural confusion of a young man detected in the use of undue heroical expressions, the Colonel was himself again. "And this, I suppose, is my resting-place for the night," he said, as a church-spire and the roofs of a village became dimly visible before them at the end of the road. "I will remain here three or four days, and during that time, Horace, you must find out your inclinations, my boy, and let us discuss them and see what is to be done. You must stay and dine with me in the first place, and be with me as much as possible while I am here--that is to say, unless your father makes any positive claim upon you during the time."