reat Dr. Johnson and see if the cap fits, 'The true
genius is a mind of large general powers accidentally determined in some
particular direction.'

"'Large general powers'!--yes, I believe after all you have them with,
alas, poor Derrick! one notable exception--the mathematical faculty. You
were always bad at figures. We will stick to De Quincey's definition,
and for heaven's sake, my dear fellow, do get Lynwood out of that awful
plight! No wonder you were depressed when you lived all this age with
such a sentence unfinished!"

"For the matter of that," said Derrick, "he can't get out till the end
of the book; but I can begin to go on with him now."

"And when you leave Oxford?"

"Then I mean to settle down in London--to write leisurely--and possibly
to read for the Bar."

"We might be together," I suggested. And Derrick took to this idea,
being a man who detested solitude and crowds about equally. Since his
mother's death he had been very much alone in the world. To Lawrence he
was always loyal, but the two had nothing in common, and though fond
of his sister he could not get on at all with the manufacturer, his
brother-in-law. But this prospect of life together in London pleased him
amazingly; he began to recover his spirits to a great extent and to look
much more like himself.

It must have been just as he had taken his degree that he received a
telegram to announce that Major Vaughan had been invalided home, and
would arrive at Southampton in three weeks' time. Derrick knew very
little of his father, but apparently Mrs. Vaughan had done her best to
keep up a sort of memory of his childish days at Aldershot, and in
these the part that his father played was always pleasant. So he looked
forward to the meeting not a little, while I, from the first, had my
doubts as to the felicity it was likely to bring him.

However, it was ordained that before the Major's ship arrived, his son's
whole life should change. Even Lynwood was thrust into the background.
As for me, I was nowhere. For Derrick, the quiet, the self-contained,
had fallen passionately in love with a certain Freda Merrifield.

Chapter II.

'Infancy? What if the rose-streak of morning
Pale and depart in a passion of tears?
Once to have hoped is no matter for scorning:
Love once: e'en love's disappointment endears;
A moment's success pays the failure of years.'
R. Browni