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1885.] influential connections that almost hustle a clever young fellow uphill. If the world was his oyster, as he believed, it was for him to find the knife to open it; and he had been sorely exercised over the choice of a profession. He was in haste to arrive, and yet he longed to linger – or at least to improve each shining hour, in the way of pleasure as well as business. A life of aimless pleasure would have been intolerable to him; a life of richly repaid monotony, or of dull isolation in some back-of-the-world colony, would have been even worse. He would have scouted a consulship and an income of £3000, had such gifts of Providence been on the cards, since they would have involved exile and possessing his soul in patience through a long course of saving. Such a career as Moray's had been, seemed altogether different. There was perpetual excitement in it to make privations almost pleasurable, with the chances of the coups that carried you forward to wealth. He honestly admired his uncle and his success; and had it occurred to the elder man to place Venables in his shoes when he retired, the youth would have asked nothing better of fortune. That, however, had not occurred to Mr Moray; and Jack, with his vague fancies and indefinite future, seemed a singularly impracticable subject. He might turn out well or ill: he was the very man, according to the Scotch saying, "to make a spoon or to spoil a horn." For that very reason, perhaps, Moray liked him; and, what meant more in a man of his shrewdness, he believed in him. He thought Jack would be well worth a helping hand, and that hand he was quite ready to extend. So it could not have been without due consideration that he threw the impecunious but agreeable youth into familiar relations with his pretty daughter. And yet Grace's prospects caused him ceaseless anxiety; and he seldom thought of the fortune she was to inherit, without his usually equable temper being ruffled.

But whatever the future might have in store for the party at Glenconan, it was certain that they were thoroughly enjoying the present. Grace had brought delightful weather with her: balmy evenings and glorious sunsets succeeded the bright and genial days. The monkey that had been sent down from town with the heavy baggage, having shaken off the agues and shivering-fits that had oppressed him during the rains, roamed verandah and roofs like a chartered libertine, doing infinite damage to the crockery and the flower-beds when people's backs were turned. Grace had taken him in warm affection; and consequently both her cousins courted him assiduously, to the great development of the virtue of self-control. There was little affectation in that with Leslie, who was placid and long-suffering, and whom all animals at once recognised as a friend. But it was as good as a bit of comedy to see Jack Venables instinctively raise his hand for a cuff, or his foot for a kick, smooth his ruffled eyebrows on second thoughts, and fondly stroke the objectionable animal, who probably repaid the caress with a snarl or a snap.

And to Moray, who said nothing, though little escaped him, "the monkey in the family" meant a great deal. He saw that both the cousins were, metaphorically, falling at the feet of the heiress, though neither might have acknowledged to himself how much he had come to care for her. Yet he looked on quietly, and let matters take their course, as if the