"It is your fault, mother," he replied. "When I was only twelve years old, you gave me a beautiful edition of Froissart's Chronicles, and everything else has seemed dull and tame to me since."
"I thought as much," she said, quietly; "you make the same mistake others have made before you; you live in the past, not in the present."
"You are right, mother; in these days, there seems to me nothing to do."
"Your father thought differently," she said; "he died from overwork."
"Ah! my dear father was a genius," said the young man, thoughtfully, and for some minutes there was silence between them.
"I can understand you," said Lady Hildegarde, with a smile; "you would like to have been a knight, always looking out for some romantic adventure; you would have fought giants, released distressed princesses."
"Overthrown all wrong and upheld all right," he said; "that would have been my vocation."
Lady Hildegarde went over to him and laid her hand on his head. "My dearest boy, you are young yet, but will live to see that there is as much to be done in the way of redressing wrong now as there was in the days when knights rode forth to do battle for lady fair."
"I want some romantic adventure," he said; "I cannot see much in the plain, common ways of man. I should like to do something that would make me a hero at once, something brave and glorious."
"My dear boy," she said; "God grant you may learn to distinguish true from false, true romance from mere sentiment, true gold from mere glitter."
He looked so eager, so handsome, she kissed him with passionate love.
"I should like to have been one of King Arthur's knights," he said, musingly.
"My dear Basil," said his mother; "your mind is chaos. I tell you there are giants to be fought, hydra-headed ones--the giants of ignorance, of wickedness, of injustice, and they call for a sharper, keener sword than that wielded by the knights of old."
And there came into her heart a great fear lest her boy, who had too much imagination, too much ideality, would waste his life in dreams.
"I will tell you, Basil," said Marion Hautville; "what I call a great hero. The man who does his duty perfectly in the state of life in which God has placed him."
"Indeed we do not--you do not, to begin with. You ought now, instead of dreaming about Froissart and his barbaric times, you ought to be studying hard how to make a good master of this large estate--how to employ the vast wealth given to you--how best to serve your God, your country and those who will depend upon you."