n with Canada, but it was not
possible to withstand the entreaties of a father with tears in his
eyes; and though he could not bring himself to consent to preparing to
be his father's curate, he promised to do nothing that would remove him
to another quarter of the world, and in two or three days more, started
for Monks Horton to see what advice his uncle and aunt there could give
him; indeed, Lord Kirkaldy's influence was reckoned on by his family
almost as a sure card in the diplomatic line.

The Kirkaldys were very fond of Mark, and had an odd feeling of being
accountable for the discovery which had changed his prospects. They
would have done anything for him that they could, but all Lord
Kirkaldy's interest was at the foreign office, or with his
fellow-diplomates, and here he soon found an insuperable bar. Mark's
education had stood still from the time of Miss Headworth's flight till
his father's second marriage, his energies having been solely devoted
to struggles with the grim varieties of governess purveyed by his
grandmother, and he had thus missed all chance of foundation of foreign
languages, and when once at school, he had shared in the average
English boy's contempt and aversion for the French masters who
outscreamed a whole class.

In consequence, Lord Kirkaldy, an accurate and elegant scholar in
European tongues, besides speaking them with the cosmopolitan ease of
an ambassador's son, was horrified, not only at Mark's pronunciation,
but at his attempts at letter-writing and translation, made with all
the good will in the world, but fit for nothing but to furnish the good
stories which the kind uncle refrained from telling any one but his
wife. Unluckily, too, a Piedmontese family, some of them not strong in
their English, were on a visit at Monks Horton, and the dialect in
which the old marquis and Mark tried at times to interchange ideas
about pheasants was something fearful. And as in the course of a week
Mark showed no signs of improvement in vernacular French or Italian,
Lord Kirkaldy's conscience would let him give no other advice than that
his nephew should stick to English law living still on the allowance
his father gave him, and hoping for one of the chance appointments open
to an English barrister of good family and fair ability.

Of course Mark had gone at once to carry tidings of 'Aunt Alice,' as he
scrupulously called her, to old Miss Headworth, whom his aunt had
continued to visit at i