nor disturbed him. He stood very quiet and thoughtful.
Visionary-like, he saw pictures of the future, indeed,--but very
different from the one just drawn. He was not afraid.

And Captain Gray left him unconvinced and unmoved. It was not probable
the two brothers would see this matter in the same light. They stood on
different levels. They must be content to differ.

The next conference on the subject was between Everett and Lady
Beauchamp; and the mother of Rosa was, it must be admitted, a rather
formidable person to encounter in such wise. She was a busy, clever,
worldly woman,--kind-hearted, too, and with both a strong will and
strong affections. She was one of those people in whom even an astute
observer might often be deceived, by failing to give her credit for
certain good qualities which are commonly coexistent with
worldliness,--especially in a woman. There was a spice of something
better latent amid her shrewdness and hard-headed sagacity; the echo of
more generous aspirations lingered through all the noise of this earth's
Babel in her heart. And so, when she heard of Everett's resolve to pay
his father's debts by parting with the property, her better and higher
nature warmed to the young man; and though she protested against his
Quixotism, and frowned, and talked of prudence, and so forth, her busy
brain was, in fact, all the while setting itself to work for his
benefit. She was, in a way, fond of the young man. No woman is quite
insensible to that chivalrous deference which a Visionary like Everett
always manifests to womanhood, collective and individual. And though she
certainly held him to be rash, foolish, unfit to deal with the world,
"poetical," (a capital crime in her eyes,) and dreamy, she yet liked
him, and was glad to discover a plan whereby the objections to his
marriage with her daughter, under the present adverse circumstances,
might be smoothed away.

She was sitting at her big desk, strewn with accounts, in the
sober-looking library where she always spent her mornings, and she rose
to receive her prospective son-in-law, with an aspect serious and
business-like, yet not stern.

"Well, my dear Everett, what is all this that I hear about you? A very,
very sad affair, of course; but you must come and tell me how you intend
to act. Yes, yes,--I've heard something about it; but I don't quite
understand the state of the case. I want to have a talk with you."

And she leaned her comely face upon her