"I'm glad of it, heartily glad of it! Not that, as regarded myself,
it mattered much where I was laid up in dock; but I find that this
isolation, instead of drawing the members of my family more closely
together, has but served to widen the breach between them. Lady Hester
and Sydney rarely meet; George sees neither of them, and rarely comes
near me, so that the sooner we go hence the better for all of us."

Grounsell gave a dry nod of assent, without speaking.

"Sydney is very anxious to go and pass some time with her aunt Conway;
but I foresee that, if I consent, the difference between Lady Hester and
her will then become an irreconcilable quarrel. You don't agree with me,
Grounsell?"

"I do not. I never knew the ends of a fractured bone unite by grating
them eternally against each other."

"And, as for George, the lounging habits of his service and cigars have
steeped him in an indolence from which there is no emerging. I scarcely
know what to do with him."

"It's hard enough to decide upon," rejoined Grounsell; "he has some
pursuits, but not one ambition."

"He has very fair abilities, certainly," said Sir Stafford, half
peevishly.

"Very fair!" nodded Grounsell.

"A good memory, a quick apprehension."

"He has one immense deficiency, for which nothing can compensate," said
the doctor, solemnly.

"Application, industry?"

"No, with his opportunities a great deal is often acquired with
comparatively light labor. I mean a greater and more important element."

"He wants steadiness, you think?"

"No; I 'll tell you what he wants, he wants pluck!"

Sir Stafford's cheek became suddenly crimson, and his blue eyes grew
almost black in the angry expression of the moment.

"Pluck, sir? My son deficient in courage?"

"Not as you understand it now," resumed Grouusell, calmly. "He has
enough, and more than enough, to shoot me or anybody else that would
impugn it. The quality I mean is of a very different order. It is the
daring to do a thing badly to-day in the certain confidence that you,
will do it better to-morrow, and succeed perfectly in it this day
twelvemonth. He has not pluck to encounter repeated failures, and yet
return every morning to the attack; he has not pluck to be bullied
by mediocrity in the sure and certain confidence that he will live to
surpass it; in a word, he has not that pluck which resists the dictation
of inferior minds, and inspires self-reliance through self-respect."

"I confe