“I hope you will live many years to manage it yourself,” said Ernest. “Ah, I don’t know, I am pretty tough; but who can see the future? Dolly, my dear girl,” he went on, in a dreamy way, “you are growing like your mother. Do you know, I sometimes think that I am not far off her now; you see I speak plainly to you two. Years ago I used to think—that is, sometimes—that your mother was dust and nothing more; that she had left me for ever; but of late I have changed my ideas. I have seen,” he went on, speaking in an absent way, as though he were meditating to himself, “how wonderfully Providence works even in the affairs of this imperfect world, and I begin to believe that there must be a place where it allows itself a larger development. Yes, I think I shall find your mother somewhere, Dorothy, my dear. I seem to feel her very near me sometimes. Well, I have avenged her.” “I think that you will find her, Reginald,” she answered; “but your vengeance is wicked and wrong. I have often made bold to tell you so, though sometimes you have been angry with me, and I tell you so again. It can only bring evil with it. What have we poor creatures to do with vengeance, who do not understand the reason of things, and can scarcely see an inch before our noses?” “Perhaps you are right, my love—you generally are right in the main; but my desire for vengeance upon that man De Talor has been the breath of my nostrils, and behold! I have achieved it. Man, if he only lives long enough, and has strength of will enough can achieve anything. But man fritters away his powers over a variety of objects; he is led astray in pursuit of the butterfly Pleasure, or the bubble Ambition, or the Destroying Angel Woman; and his purposes fall to the ground between a dozen stools. Most men, too, are not capable of a purpose. Men are weak creatures; and yet what a mighty seed lies hid in every human breast! Think, my children, what man might, nay, may become, when his weakness and follies have fallen from him, when his rudimentary virtues have been developed, and his capacities for physical and mental beauties brought to an undreamed of perfection! Look at the wild flower and the flower of the hot-house—it is nothing compared to the possibilities inherent in man, even as we know him. It is a splendid dream! Will it ever be fulfilled, I wonder? Well, well— ‘Whatever there is to know That we shall know one day.’