Vincent laughed again, and looked around the table at his worshipping women; but his glance rested upon Angelica. She caught her breath, stared up at him; and then, for the first time, smiled at him, a smile quite strange to her, trembling and uncertain. III Eddie pushed back his chair and got up. "Miss Kennedy," he said, "I’ve some more books for you--if you’ll come and get them." "All right!" she answered carelessly. He hesitated a moment, as if he were about to speak; then he went on up-stairs into his room, leaving the door open so that he could watch the lighted hall. He saw his mother go by, into her own room; then he heard the sound of the piano down-stairs--Polly’s familiar touch. "I suppose she’ll stay down there--jabbering!" he said to himself, jealous, hurt beyond measure. "When _he_ comes, with his damned swagger, of course she has no further use for--for study and improvement. She’ll forget all about coming!" He couldn’t read, himself. He sat facing the door, restless, miserable. There came to his mind so many stories he had read, operas he had heard, with the tragic rivalry of brothers for their theme. And wasn’t he the very prototype of the good brother; the one who is always wronged by the reckless, handsome one--by Vincent? He thrust the thought away. Damned nonsense! No one was in love with any one else in this house! He recognized an old and most unworthy adversary in this jealousy, something which he had tried for years to combat. It was the most convincing proof of Eddie’s greatness of soul that he did so struggle with this envy, and that he did not hate his brother. He had every possible reason for doing so. He had the memory of years and years of injuries and injustices; he had seen this brother always exalted above him, always held up to him as an example of all the social virtues. "If you’d only try to be more like Vincent!" his mother used to sigh. Eddie couldn’t dance, couldn’t sing, couldn’t in any sort of way ingratiate himself. He wasn’t liked. His goodness itself was perhaps the chief thing against him. "I never worry about Eddie," Mrs. Russell had often said in his hearing. "He’s perfectly safe." And he knew that this was a most unattractive thing to be. He had never got on with Vincent. There was only two years’ difference between them, and Eddie had never been able to make even this apparent. He was smaller, he developed much more slowly, he never could obtain any of the prestige due to him as the elder. Eddie, at nineteen, had been nothing but a somewhat priggish and very shy school-boy, while Vincent, at seventeen, was a young man.