Only to the elect is it granted--the few chosen, where all are called.

To some it falls as if by the pure grace of Heaven, meeting them as they walk in the common way.

Some, the fewest, attain it by merit of patient hope, climbing resolute until, on the heights of noble life, a face shines before them, the face of one who murmurs "_Guardami ben_!" He thought much, too, about his offspring.

The two children of his first marriage he had educated on the approved English model, making them "gentlemen." Partly because he knew not well how else to train them, for Jerome was far too weak on the practical side to have shaped a working system of his own--a system he durst rely upon; and partly, too, because they seemed to him to inherit many characteristics from their mother, and so to be naturally fitted for some conventional upper-class career.

The result was grievous failure.