And so Everett Gray, his mother, and his sister, went to Canada. A year after, Agnes was married to Charles Barclay, then a thriving merchant in Montreal. When the people at home heard of this, they very wisely acknowledged "how much good there had been in that young man, in spite of his rashness and folly in early days. No fear about such a man's getting on in life, when once he gave his mind to it," and so forth.
Meanwhile, our Visionary——But what need is there to trace him, step by step, in the new life he doubtless found fully as arduous as he had anticipated? That it was a very struggling, difficult, and uncongenial life to him can be well understood. These reminiscences of Everett Gray relate to a long past time. We can look on his life now as almost complete and finished, and regard his past as those in the valley look up to the hill that has nothing between it and heaven.
Many years he remained in Canada, working hard. Tidings occasionally reached England of his progress. Rosa, perhaps, heard such at rare intervals,—though somewhat distorted, it may be, from their original tenor, before they reached her. But it appeared certain that he was "getting on." In defiance and utter contradiction of all the sapient predictions there anent, it seemed that this dreamy, poetizing Everett Gray was absolutely successful in his new vocation of man-of-business.
The news that he had become a partner in the firm he had entered as a clerk was communicated in a letter from himself to Lady Beauchamp. In it he, for the first time since his departure, spoke of Rosa; but he spoke of her as if they had parted but yesterday; and, in asking her mother's sanction to their betrothal now, urged, as from them both, their claim to have that boon granted at last.
Lady Beauchamp hastily questioned her daughter.
"You must have been corresponding with the young man all this time?" she said.
But Rosa's denial was not to be mistaken.
"He has heard of you, then, through some one," the practical lady went on; "or, for anything he knows, you may be married, or going to be married, instead of waiting for him, as he seems to take it for granted you have been all this time."
"He was right, mother," Rosa only said.