"Mere personal ambition will not satisfy him," added his mother, proudly. "He must see opportunities for service. He must understand that he is needed." "I see. I understand. He must be dealt with along the line of his nobler impulses--ahem--ahem--" and David appeared. His mother rose and took his arm to walk out to dinner, while Laura, who should have gone with Mr. Stretton, did not see his proffered arm, but, provokingly indifferent, strolled out by herself. David, absorbed in his own thoughts, did not notice his sister's careless mien, but the mother observed the independent and boyish swing of her daughter's shoulders, and resented it with a slightly reproving glance after they were seated. Laura lifted her eyebrows and one shoulder with an irritating half shrug. "What is it, mamma?" she asked, but Lady Thryng allowed the question to go unheeded, and turned her attention to the two gentlemen during the rest of the meal. All through dinner David was haunted by Cassandra's talk with him, the night he dreamed she was being swept out of his arms forever by a swift, cold current which, from a little purling stream high up on a mountain top, had become a dark, relentless flood, overwhelming them utterly. What was she doing now? Did she know she was in that terrible flood? Was she really being swept from him? Ah, never, never! He would not allow it, if he must break all hearts but hers. The meal progressed sombrely and heavily, with much ceremony, although they were so few. Was his mother practising for the future that she kept such rigid state? He suspected as much, and that Laura was being trained to the right way of carrying herself, but that and the real sorrow of the family over their bereavement made a most oppressive atmosphere. Might this be the shadow Cassandra had seen lying across their future? Only a passing cloud--a vapor; it must be only that. Laura and her mother withdrew early, leaving David and the lawyer together, when Mr. Stretton immediately launched into talk of David's prospects and resources. In spite of himself, the gloom of the dinner hour slipped from him, and soon he was taking the liveliest interest in what might be possible for him here and now. Although not one to be easily turned from a chosen path by outside influence, David yet had that almost fatal gift of the imaginative mind of seeing things from many sides, until at times they took on a kaleidoscopic reversibility. Now this unlooked-for development of his life opened to him a vista--new--and yet old, old as England herself.