"Different sorts of kindness?" Hugh Gosselin asked with a laugh; and the inquiry undertaken by his mother occupied them for the moment, demanding a subtlety of treatment from which they were not conscious of shrinking, of which rather they had an idea that they were perhaps exceptionally capable. They came back to the temperate view that Guy would never put himself out, would probably never do anything great, but might show himself all the same a delightful member of society. Yes, he was probably selfish, like other people; but unlike most of them he was, somehow, amiably, attachingly, sociably, almost lovably selfish. Without doing anything great he would yet be a great success--a big, pleasant, gossiping, lounging and, in its way doubtless very splendid, presence. He would have no ambition, and it was ambition that made selfishness ugly. Hugh and his mother were sure of this last point until Mary, before whom the discussion, when it reached this stage, happened to be carried on, checked them by asking whether that, on the contrary, were not just what was supposed to make it fine. "Oh, he only wants to be comfortable," said her brother; "but he _does_ want it!" "There'll be a tremendous rush for him," Mrs. Gosselin prophesied to her son. "Oh, he'll never marry. It will be too much trouble." "It's done here without any trouble--for the men. One sees how long you've been out of the country." "There was a girl in New York whom he might have married--he really liked her. But he wouldn't turn round for her." "Perhaps she wouldn't turn round for _him_," said Mary. "I daresay she'll turn round _now_," Mrs. Gosselin rejoined; on which Hugh mentioned that there was nothing to be feared from her, all her revolutions had been accomplished. He added that nothing would make any difference--so intimate was his conviction that Beaupré would preserve his independence. "Then I think he's not so selfish as you say," Mary declared; "or at any rate one will never know whether he is. Isn't married life the great chance to show it?" "Your father never showed it," said Mrs. Gosselin; and as her children were silent in presence of this tribute to the departed she added, smiling: "Perhaps you think that _I_ did!" They embraced her, to indicate what they thought, and the conversation ended, when she had remarked that Lord Beaupré was a man who would be perfectly easy to manage _after_ marriage, with Hugh's exclaiming that this was doubtless exactly why he wished to keep out of it.