On their arrival in America Ronald took Maurice to his southern home, where he was received with a cordial hospitality that strengthened and confirmed the tie of brotherhood between the young men.

We will not attempt to portray the meeting between Ronald and his parents,—a meeting so full of joy that its throbs quickened into the pulse of pain, as though clay-compassed hearts were hardly large enough to endure the ecstasy of such a reunion. Nor will we dwell upon the proud elation with which Ronald's first ambitious attempt in art was contemplated by his parents. Their praises might simply have testified that love appreciates; the hand that wrought might have sanctified even a feeble work to their sight; but colder judgments pronounced Ronald's initiatory achievement a pledge of power, and all the more decisive because the execution of the youthful hand obviously had not kept pace with the strong conception of the fervid brain.

We pass on to the effect produced upon Maurice by his sojourn in Ronald's transatlantic home.

Many a pang did the youthful Frenchman endure as he noted the thorough and genial understanding which seemed to exist between the southern youth and his father. Maurice was amazed by Mr. Walton's unfailing recognition that his son was a responsible being; by the confidence he reposed in him; by the unequivocal manner in which he placed him upon a footing of equality, even while guiding him by his counsels,—counsels offered as the results of a larger experience, yet never so compulsorily urged as to check his son's freedom of decision. Maurice, marked, too, the earnest interest with which Mr. Walton entered into all Ronald's projects, albeit some of them appeared too wild and high-reaching to be easy of accomplishment; beheld how readily the paternal hand was stretched out to soften the ordeals through which the neophyte must inevitably pass, and was moved by the touching frankness with which the noble-minded parent repeatedly congratulated himself that he had not permitted his own predilections to force Ronald into a field of action repugnant to his tastes.

When Maurice instinctively compared this liberal, high-toned father's mode of influencing his son with the tyrannous control of the haughty count, and contrasted Ronald's untrammeled position with his own state of dependent nonentity, he felt that unstruggling submission to the cruel decree which doomed him to waste those fresh, strong, aspiring years of his life in hopeless idleness was a weakness rather than a virtue.

He was only spared from passing a judgment upon his father, more correct than filial, by throwing the blame of his conduct upon the shackling customs, and false opinions, and arbitrary laws of his native land. He could not but be forcibly struck by the wide dissimilarity between the usages and views of life which distinguished the two nations. In America, he saw men, self-made and self-educated, at an age when young Frenchmen have scarcely begun to be aware that they have any independent existence, rising to prominent and honorable positions, taking a bold part in public affairs, and asserting by their achievements the maturity of their brains. He saw men, who had been forced by circumstances to commence their lives of toil and self-support at fifteen and eighteen, a few years later not only gaining their own livelihood, but contributing to the maintenance of their families, and laying the foundation of future fortune. He saw artistic tastes, literary talents, professional, legislative, and military abilities, brought to opulent fruition in men but a few years his senior; and though every one seemed to work at high pressure, every one appeared to live rapidly, crowding each day with actions, still men lived, lived consciously, planting along the pathway of their pilgrimage the landmarks of positive deeds; and they sowed, and reaped, and rejoiced in their harvests, and if some of them grew old faster than their European brethren, their age was at least enriched by varied memories, vast experiences, manifold mental gains, that testified to the value of their lives.

And was it imperative, Maurice asked himself, that the accident of noble blood should paralyze a man's volition, and that the bearing of a noble name should render his life inertly ignoble? He recognized that, in the seeming curse which condemned man to "work," God had hidden the richest blessing, even as he buried golden veins in the dark bosom of the earth. "Labor was privilege," and gave its sweetest flavor to the daily cup of life.

As for Ronald, though he loved his country with the enthusiasm which characterized all his affections, he had never been fully cognizant of the advantages it possessed over the land in which he had lately sojourned until he saw them through the eyes of Maurice.

Nothing is more true than that we can render no service to another by which we are not served ourselves, served spiritually, therefore actually, and in the highest sense; and not merely in his new appreciation of the land of his birth, but in numerous other ways, Ronald was the unconscious gainer by the helpful influence he exerted over his friend. The youthful Mentor confirmed himself in grand and vital truths while imparting them to Maurice; his own noble resolves were quickened into activity while he sought to infuse them into the mind of another; his own spirit acquired strength while he was endeavoring to render his companion strong of soul. Ronald's character was perhaps more affluent and expansive, had more force and fixedness of purpose, than that of Maurice, yet it derived fresh vigor from the less hopeful, less confident nature upon which it acted.

Though Maurice owed much to the young art-student, he soon owed more to that gentle but potent hand by which Ronald had been moulded, refined, and spiritualized. Ronald's mother opened wide her large heart and her loving arms to take in the motherless youth thrown by an apparent accident within her sphere.

Mrs. Walton was one of those beings to whom life is a poem, read it in sorrow or gladness, read it whatever way you will, because all things to her mind had a divine significance; she knew that nothing had either its end or origin here, and felt that the very day-dreams and aspirations of impulsive youth descended by influx from those supernal regions in which all causes exist, though we darkly behold them through effects ultimated upon our earthly plane. Her eyes were never bent upon the ground, to search out stumbling-blocks of doubt, but looked up Godward until the heavens grew less distant, and earth's perplexing mysteries were solved; and daily joys and daily pains only acquired importance through their bearing upon the joys and pains of eternity; and celestial light, flowing through her pure thoughts, reflected its mellow glory upon her humblest surroundings, and tinged them with ineffable beauty.

Maurice, who had been so deeply impressed by Ronald's attributes and aims, quickly recognized the fountain-head from whence flowed the living waters he had drank, and, humbly bending to quaff at the same stream, became conscious that his whole being was vitalized and renewed. The great ends of existence, for the first time, became apparent to him; and as he learned to look upon the present and temporal as only of moment through their effect upon the future and eternal,—as he renounced a senseless belief in the very names of chance and accident, and yielded to the conviction that the simplest as the gravest occurrences all tend to lay some stone in the great architectural edifice which every man is building for his own dwelling-place in the hereafter,—his trials, by some wondrous transmutation, wore a holy aspect, and gently into his unfolding spirit stole the comforting assurance that those very trials might be the fittest, the strongest, the appointed instruments to hew out the pathway he panted to tread, and carve for him a future which could never have been wrought by such tools as the velvety hands of prosperity hold in their feeble grasp.

The morbid melancholy into which Maurice had fallen, and which deepened with his vain pondering over the mysterious fate of Madeleine, rolled from his spirit before the breath of hope,—hope breathed through sunshine, from the lips of a woman whose sympathetic voice, tender looks, and quick comprehension of his emotions insensibly melted away reserve, and drew out all his confidence. He could talk to Mrs. Walton of Madeleine with an absence of reticence, an unchecked gush of feeling, which would not have been possible when he conversed with Ronald, or with any one but a woman, and such a woman.

Far from advising him, as a worldly-wise counsellor would have done, to struggle against a passion which did not promise to prove fortunate, she bade him cherish the image of the one he so ardently loved with perfect trust, that if that woman were indeed his other self,—that separate half which makes man's full complement,—he would, in spite of all adverse circumstances, be drawn to her, by mysterious and invisible cords, until their union was consummated.

Mrs. Walton entertained the not irrational belief that as "either sex alone is half itself," and "each fulfils defects in each," there was created for every male soul some feminine spirit, whose heart was capable of responding to the finest pulses of his; one who could meet his largest requirements; one who could alone render his being perfect, his true manhood complete; one whom he might never meet on earth, and yet who lived for him. This great truth (for as such he accepted it) was a glorious revelation to Maurice. He cast out the remembrance that Madeleine had said she loved another, or only recalled her declaration to feel certain that she had mistaken her own heart, or that he had misconstrued the language she had used. She became more vividly present than ever to his mind, and the constant thought that now confidently and happily wound itself about her seemed to him to annihilate material distances and bring their spirits into close communion.

Maurice passed two delightful months beneath the hospitable roof of Mr. and Mrs. Walton. The period which Ronald had allowed himself for a holiday drew to a close. The sense of unoccupied power had begun to render him restless, and it was with elation which might have appeared tinctured with ingratitude by those who did not comprehend the mysterious workings of his untranquil ambition, that he prepared for his return to that foreign land where he could enjoy advantages for the prosecution of his art-studies unattainable in a young country.

When Maurice embarked for America with Ronald, it was understood that they were to return to Europe together; but one morning, when the latter casually announced his intention of securing their passage on board of a steamer about to sail from New York, Maurice turned to him and said abruptly,—

"Ronald, one berth will be sufficient."

"My dear fellow, what do you mean?" inquired Ronald, only half surprised.

"It is impossible for me," replied Maurice, "to return to my life of indolence and supposed gayety. A snake might more easily crawl back into his cast-off skin. I have breathed this free, exhilarating, vitalizing atmosphere, and the convention-laden air of Paris would stifle me. I have written to my father and announced that I propose remaining in Charleston. That is not all: he forbade my studying law in Paris, because his sapient Breton neighbors would have been scandalized by a viscount's taking so sensible a step; but possibly I may prepare myself for the bar at this distance, without subjecting my father to the annoyance of their disapproval. The period required for study is shorter, and I shall have a wider field in which to practise. I cannot be prepared to enter upon the duties of my profession much before the time when, according to the laws of France, I shall reach my majority; meanwhile I study, we will say, for amusement. I study as other men hunt, fish, boat, skate. What do you think of my plan?"

Ronald grasped him warmly by the hand.

"It is just what I expected of you, Maurice! When we first met, and I was so strongly attracted to you, an internal prescience whispered that you had within you the very qualities which are asserting their existence to-day."

"They might have been in me, Ronald," answered Maurice with emotion; "but I fear they would never have been brought out but for your agency. I never can be grateful enough that we have been thrown together! I never can sum up the good you have done me! I stood in such great need of just the influence you and your mother"—The voice of Maurice trembled, and he was unable to proceed.

Ronald broke the somewhat embarrassing silence by saying,—

"In short, you have come to the conclusion that my mother is right in her faith, and whatever we actually need for our spiritual advancement is invariably sent, if we will but preserve ourselves in a state of reception. All that you still lack will be supplied in the same way, if you can but believe."

"I do believe," answered Maurice, in a tone of greater solemnity than the occasion seemed to demand; but there was a world of meaning in those three words. We should be obliged to employ many if we attempted to express a tithe of what he had recently learned to believe through the instrumentality of a noble thinker.

A week later, Ronald folded his mother to his throbbing heart, and tenderly bade her adieu; but, without feeling that he should be parted from her by their material separation. Strange to say, his farewell to his father and Maurice was shadowed by a nearer approach to sadness and a more definite sense of sundering. Possibly their spirits had less power than his mother's to annihilate space and follow him whithersoever he went.

Maurice was induced to linger a few days longer as the guest of his new friends, and his presence prevented the void left by the departure of a beloved and only son from being too keenly felt. At the commencement of a new week the young viscount removed to Charleston. That city was only a few miles distant from the residence of Ronald's parents. Mr. Walton had made his visitor acquainted with an eminent lawyer, who consented to receive Maurice de Gramont as a student.

Count Tristan at first violently opposed his son's step, but he could not, with any show of reason, forbid his studying law as a pastime. The count's affairs became more and more entangled, and he grew more desirous than ever that his son should contract a wealthy marriage. The hope that Maurice might woo and win one of those numerous heiresses, who, Frenchmen imagine, abound in the Southern El Dorado, alone reconciled the haughty nobleman to his son's sojourn in America.