“Well, he has thrown out some hints, but I only laughed, thinking it was a joke. Upon my word now, Prescott, this is too bad!” Frank went on with an air of great perplexity, “It seems to me that my uncle and you have entered into a sort of plot to marry me to Alice. Thank goodness, though,” he said, cheering up, “Alice is not in it, for she has quite changed since I came back again. We were awful friends formerly, I used to kiss her regularly, and we were as jolly together as possible. When I came back from abroad, after being away two years, of course I kissed her when we met, but next time I offered to do so, she would not have it, and said that she was a great deal too old for that sort of thing. I said that we were cousins, and therefore it was all right and proper, but she answered quite sharply, that we were, indeed, nothing of the sort. Altogether she has been at times quite stiff and formal, and not a bit like what she was before I went away to the Continent. No, no, she is not in the conspiracy. Upon my word, Prescott, you quite frightened me. We like each other very well—very much perhaps, but there is not the slightest risk of either of us going further.” Prescott shrugged his shoulders with an irritable impatience which was very unusual to him. He was angry with Frank for his careless indifference, and yet, although he told himself over and over again that he was sorry to see that his friend was so blind, how could he help being glad? To him this was no new subject. He had thought it over and over till his head ached with the thought many a time. He had seen, years before, how the girl had looked up to Frank, had listened to his schoolboy stories, and his college tales, how she had submitted to all his boy’s humours, and had made a hero of him to herself. He had noticed in the last year before Frank went abroad, how the girl’s feeling had grown and intensified with her own growth towards womanhood; how she flushed up when Frank paid her little attentions; and how quickly she resented it whenever he still treated her as a child. He had noticed how eagerly she listened to all that was said about Frank when he was away, and, at the same time, how she shrank from appearing to pay any but the most ordinary attention. And more than ever, since Frank’s return, was Prescott sure that Alice Heathcote loved him. Another, a less close and less obtrusive watcher, would not have seen all this, but Prescott had a deep stake in the matter. He knew that he loved Alice with the whole strength of his nature. Had he believed that he had the slightest chance of success, he would have yielded no point of vantage, even to his friend Frank. Had both entered for the prize, and had Alice been neutral, Prescott would have told his friend frankly that they were rivals, and fought the matter out to the last. But here he could do nothing. The prize was given away, and the winner was too indifferent to stretch out his hand for it.