Something akin to the indications of a change in the spirit of his son, which were now seen, Sir Austin had marked down to be expected, as due to his plan.  The blushes of the youth, his long vigils, his clinging to solitude, his abstraction, and downcast but not melancholy air, were matters for rejoicing to the prescient gentleman.  “For it comes,” said he to Dr. Clifford of Lobourne, after consulting him medically on the youth’s behalf and being assured of his soundness, “it comes of a thoroughly sane condition.  The blood is healthy, the mind virtuous:  neither instigates the other to evil, and both are perfecting toward the flower of manhood.  If he reach that pure—­in the untainted fulness and perfection of his natural powers—­I am indeed a happy father!  But one thing he will owe to me:  that at one period of his life he knew paradise, and could read God’s handwriting on the earth!  Now those abominations whom you call precocious boys—­your little pet monsters, doctor!—­and who can wonder that the world is what it is? when it is full of them—­as they will have no divine time to look back upon in their own lives, how can they believe in innocence and goodness, or be other than sons of selfishness and the Devil?  But my boy,” and the baronet dropped his voice to a key that was touching to hear, “my boy, if he fall, will fall from an actual region of purity.  He dare not be a sceptic as to that.  Whatever his darkness, he will have the guiding light of a memory behind him.  So much is secure.”

To talk nonsense, or poetry, or the dash between the two, in a tone of profound sincerity, and to enunciate solemn discordances with received opinion so seriously as to convey the impression of a spiritual insight, is the peculiar gift by which monomaniacs, having first persuaded themselves, contrive to influence their neighbours, and through them to make conquest of a good half of the world, for good or for ill.  Sir Austin had this gift.  He spoke as if he saw the truth, and, persisting in it so long, he was accredited by those who did not understand him, and silenced them that did.

“We shall see,” was all the argument left to Dr. Clifford, and other unbelievers.

So far certainly the experiment had succeeded.  A comelier, bracer, better boy was nowhere to be met.  His promise was undeniable.  The vessel, too, though it lay now in harbour and had not yet been proved by the buffets of the elements on the great ocean, had made a good trial trip, and got well through stormy weather, as the records of the Bakewell Comedy witnessed to at Raynham.  No augury could be hopefuller.  The Fates must indeed be hard, the Ordeal severe, the Destiny dark, that could destroy so bright a Spring!  But, bright as it was, the baronet relaxed nothing of his vigilant supervision.  He said to his intimates:  “Every act, every fostered inclination, almost every thought, in this Blossoming Season, bears its seed for the Future.  The living Tree now requires