The great firm in the City had obviously made a discovery in relation to their clerk, exactly similar to the discovery which had formerly forced itself on the engineer in relation to his pupil.  The young man, as they politely phrased it, stood in need of some special stimulant to stir him up.  His employers (acting under a sense of their obligation to the gentleman by whom Frank had been recommended) had considered the question carefully, and had decided that the one promising use to which they could put Mr. Francis Clare was to send him forthwith into another quarter of the globe.

As a consequence of this decision, it was now, therefore, proposed that he should enter the house of their correspondents in China; that he should remain there, familiarizing himself thoroughly on the spot with the tea trade and the silk trade for five years; and that he should return, at the expiration of this period, to the central establishment in London.  If he made a fair use of his opportunities in China, he would come back, while still a young man, fit for a position of trust and emolument, and justified in looking forward, at no distant date, to a time when the House would assist him to start in business for himself.  Such were the new prospects which—­to adopt Mr. Clare’s theory—­now forced themselves on the ever-reluctant, ever-helpless and ever-ungrateful Frank.  There was no time to be lost.  The final answer was to be at the office on “Monday, the twentieth”:  the correspondents in China were to be written to by the mail on that day; and Frank was to follow the letter by the next opportunity, or to resign his chance in favor of some more enterprising young man.

Mr. Clare’s reception of this extraordinary news was startling in the extreme.  The glorious prospect of his son’s banishment to China appeared to turn his brain.  The firm pedestal of his philosophy sank under him; the prejudices of society recovered their hold on his mind.  He seized Frank by the arm, and actually accompanied him to Combe-Raven, in the amazing character of visitor to the house!

“Here I am with my lout,” said Mr. Clare, before a word could be uttered by the astonished family.  “Hear his story, all of you.  It has reconciled me, for the first time in my life, to the anomaly of his existence.”  Frank ruefully narrated the Chinese proposal for the second time, and attempted to attach to it his own supplementary statement of objections and difficulties.  His father stopped him at the first word, pointed peremptorily southeastward (from Somersetshire to China); and said, without an instant’s hesitation:  “Go!” Mr. Vanstone, basking in golden visions of his young friend’s future, echoed that monosyllabic decision with all his heart.  Mrs. Vanstone, Miss Garth, even Norah herself, spoke to the same purpose.  Frank was petrified by an absolute unanimity of opinion which he had not anticipated; and Magdalen was caught, for once in her life, at the end of all her resources.