"There are so many ways of happiness," she said, "but practically only one of misery. There's self-control, Laddie"—she hesitated, and glanced at the boy's handsome head, a little bent already in anticipation of rebuke—"what is life, after all, but discipline?"
Chris thought that Rensslaer, as well as Gay, must have been getting at her, and turned restive—there seemed no comfort for him anywhere.
"Why don't you say all this to Mackrell? He deserves it quite as much as I do. He never does anything but what he likes; he doesn't even break his bones."
"Ah, my boy," she said sadly, "it is only these we love, that we take trouble about, and there's sterner, deeper stuff in you than poor Carlton; besides, Gay loves you, not him."
Chris walked to the window, and stood for a while, looking out.
"Dear Laddie," said Lavinia softly, "you are fighting for prizes that when obtained are utterly valueless, for victories more fatal than the most inglorious defeats, and all because you have not the strength of mind to break away, to assert your will-power. Nothing in this world can remain stationary—if you are not improving, you are going back—and don't you suppose that she knows it? For there is no death," she added softly; "she is living, but not here—is listening to us at this moment, for all we know."
"She always hated my riding," he said, and in those painful, heart-searching moments, realised that often the real influence of an unselfish life does not begin till it is over.
Lavinia said not one word, only looked at him with the dear blue eyes in which life, its sins, its virtues, its passions had been transmuted into a pure and utterly comprehending humanity, and at something in his face, not so much unyielding as unconquerable, because quite beyond his control, she sighed deeply. She had seen the struggle so often, and it had always ended in the one way.
There rang in her ears Gay's cry the day before,
"Oh! why is it that we love best those who have never done anything for us—have even cost us much sorrow—and are cruel and ungrateful to those who have sacrificed themselves for us—as Carlton has for me?"