isturbs you?
what is this scruple of yours!--you, who sometimes fancy you would have
been a curate yourself!'

'I have just inclination enough to be able to perceive that you have
none.'

'And is every one to follow his bent?'

'This is not a step to be taken against the grain, even for the best
earthly motives. Jem! I only beg you to ask advice. For the very
reason that you are irreproachable, you will never have it offered.'

'The present time, for instance?' said James, laughing as best he might.

'That is nothing. I have no faith in my own judgment, but, thinking as
I do of the profession and of you, I cannot help believing that my
distaste for seeing you in it must be an instinct.'

'Give me your true opinion and its grounds candidly, knowing that I
would not ask another man living.'

'Nor me, if I did not thrust it on you.'

'Now for it! Let us hear your objection.'

'Simply this. I do not see that anything impels you to take Holy
Orders immediately, except your wish to be independent, and irrevocably
fixed before your uncle can come home. This seems to me to have a
savour of something inconsistent with what you profess. It might be
fine anywhere else, but will it not bear being brought into the light
of the sanctuary? No, I cannot like it. I have no doubt many go up
for ordination far less fit than you, but--Jem, I wish you would not.
If you would but wait a year!'

'No, Fitzjocelyn, my mind is made up. I own that I might have
preferred another course, and Heaven knows it is not that I think
myself worthy of this; but I have been brought up to this, and I will
not waver. It is marked out for me as plainly as your earldom for you,
and I will do my duty in it as my appointed calling. There lies my
course of honest independence: you call it pride--see what those are
who are devoid of it: there lie my means of educating my sister,
providing for my grandmother. I can see no scruple that should deter
me.'

Fitzjocelyn having said his say, it was his turn and his nature to be
talked down.

'In short,' concluded James, walking about the room, 'there is no
alternative. Waiting for a College living is bad enough, but nothing
else can make happiness even possible.'

'One would think you meant one sort of happiness,' said Louis, with a
calm considering tone, and look of inquiry which James could not brook.

'What else?' he cried. 'Fool and madman that I am to dwell on the
hopeless--'

'Wh