to this course?"

"My Lord, I decide," said Leonard, firmly; and then, his young face
lighting up with enthusiasm, he exclaimed, "Yes, if, as you say, there be
two men within me, I feel that were I condemned wholly to the mechanical
and practical world, one would indeed destroy the other. And the
conqueror would be the ruder and the coarser. Let me pursue those ideas
that, though they have but flitted across me, vague and formless, have
ever soared towards the sunlight. No matter whether or not they lead to
fortune or to fame,--at least they will lead me upward! Knowledge for
itself I desire; what care I if it be not power!"

"Enough," said Harley, with a pleased smile at his young companion's
outburst. "As you decide so shall it be settled. And now permit me, if
not impertinent, to ask you a few questions. Your name is Leonard
Fairfield?"

The boy blushed deeply, and bowed his head as if in assent.

"Helen says you are self-taught; for the rest she refers me to you,--
thinking, perhaps, that I should esteem you less--rather than yet more
highly--if she said you were, as I presume to conjecture, of humble
birth."

"My birth," said Leonard, slowly, "is very--very--humble."

"The name of Fairfield is not unknown to me. There was one of that name
who married into a family in Lansmere, married an Avenel," continued
Harley, and his voice quivered. "You change countenance. Oh, could your
mother's name have been Avenel?"