'No, my dear. We have sold our Seaforth place.'

'Mr. Dallas would sell it back again.'

'I shall not ask him. And neither do I desire to have it back, Esther.

I have come here on good grounds, and on those grounds I shall stay.

How I personally am affected by the change is of little consequence.'

The colonel, having by this time finished his third slice of toast and drunk up his tea, turned to his book. Esther remained greatly chilled and cast down. Was her advantage to be bought at the cost of shortening her father's life? Was her rich enjoyment of study and mental growth to be balanced by suffering and weariness on his part?--every day of her new life in school to be paid for by such a day's price at home? Esther could not bear to think it. She sat pondering, chewing the bitter cud of these considerations. She longed to discuss them further, and get rid, if possible, of her father's dismal conclusions; but with him she could not, and there was no other. When her father had settled and dismissed a subject, she could rarely re-open a discussion upon it. The colonel was an old soldier; when he had delivered an opinion, he had in a sort given his orders; to question was almost to be guilty of insubordination. He had gone back to his book, and Esther dared not say another word; all the more her thoughts burnt within her, and for a long time she sat musing, going over a great many things besides those they had been talking of.

'Papa,' she said, once when the colonel stirred and let his book fall for a minute, 'do you think Pitt Dallas will come home at all?'

'William Dallas! why should he not come home? His parents will want to see him. I have some idea they expect him to come over next summer.'

'To _stay_, papa?'

'To stay the vacation. He will go back again, of course, to keep his terms.'

'At Oxford?'

'Yes; and perhaps afterwards in the Temple.'

'The Temple, papa? what is that?'

'A school of law. Do you not know so much, Esther?'

'Is he going to be a lawyer?'

'His father wishes him to study for some profession, and in that he is as usual judicious. The fact that William will have a great deal of money does not affect the matter at all. It is my belief that every man ought to have a profession. It makes him more of a man.'

'Do you think Pitt will end by being an Englishman, papa?'

'I can't tell, my dear. That would depend on circ.u.mstances, probably. I should think it very likely, and very natural.'

'But he _is_ an American.'

'Half.'

The colonel took up his book again.

'Papa,' said Esther eagerly, 'do you think Pitt will come to see us here?'

'Come to see us? If anything brings him to New York, I have no doubt he will look us up.'

'You do not think he would come all the way on purpose? Papa, he would be very much changed if he did not.'

'Impossible to say, my dear. He is very likely to have changed.' And the colonel went back to his reading.

'Papa does not care about it,' thought Esther. 'Oh, can Pitt be so much changed as that?'

CHAPTER XXII.

_A QUESTION_.

The identically same doubt busied some minds in another quarter, where Mr. and Mrs. Dallas sat expecting their son home. They were not so much concerned with it through the winter; the Gainsboroughs had been happily got rid of, and were no longer in dangerous proximity; that was enough for the time. But as the spring came on and the summer drew nigh, the thought would recur to Pitt's father and mother, whether after all they were safe.

'He mentions them in every letter he writes,' Mrs. Dallas said. She and her husband were sitting as usual in their respective easy chairs on either side of the fire. Not for that they were infirm, for there was nothing of that; they were only comfortable. Mrs. Dallas was knitting some bright wools, just now mechanically, and with a knitted brow; her husband's brow showed no disturbance. It never did.

'That's habit,' he answered to his wife's remark.

'But habit with Pitt is a tenacious thing. What will he do when he comes home and finds they are gone?'

'Make himself happy without them, I expect.'

'It wouldn't be like Pitt.'

'You knew Pitt two and a half years ago. He was a boy then; he will be a man now.'

'Do you expect the man will be different from the boy?'

'Generally are. And Pitt has been going through a process.'

'I can see something of that in his letters,' said the mother thoughtfully. 'Not much.'

'You will see more of it when he comes. What do you say in answer to his inquiries?'

'About the Gainsboroughs? Nothing. I never allude to them.'

Silence. Mr. Dallas read his paper comfortably. Mrs. Dallas's brow was still careful.

'It would be like him as he used to be, if he were to make the journey to New York to find them. And if we should seem to oppose him, it might set his fancy seriously in that direction. There's danger, husband.

Pitt is very persistent.'

'Don't see much to tempt him in that direction.'

'Beauty! And Pitt knows he will have money enough; he would not care for that.'

'I do,' said Mr. Dallas, without ceasing to read his paper.

'I would not mind the girl being poor,' Mrs. Dallas went on, 'for Pitt _will_ have money enough--enough for both; but, Hildebrand, they are incorrigible dissenters, and I do _not_ want Pitt's wife to be of that persuasion.'

'I won't have it, either.'

'Then we shall do well to think how we can prevent it. If we could have somebody here to take up his attention at least'--

'Preoccupy the ground,' said Mr. Dallas. 'The colonel would say that is good strategy.'