‘Worthy of him!’ echoed Ada, offended. ‘I’m as good as he is. He’s not the only one I could have had. No, and I needn’t be sitting in the dust to keep him. If it was all off to-morrow I could have another next week.’ ‘Could you, indeed?’ said Eleanor, coldly. ‘I think we probably don’t agree upon the matter, and had better not say any more about it. You asked my opinion, or I certainly should not have spoken to you on such a subject.’ She rose, and seeing Ada’s flushed and discomfited look, could not continue vexed with her. ‘I am sorry if I have annoyed you,’ she said, frankly, and smiling her bright smile. She offered Ada her hand, adding, still with a smile, ‘You must forgive me, and don’t let Mr. Camm know that you have been getting lectures from some one else. I expect he prefers to keep a monopoly of them.’ Ada could not rise to the occasion. She shook hands rather sheepishly, muttered something about it ‘not mattering,’ and the two separated. After lunch, late in the afternoon, and when it was growing dusk, Eleanor was sitting in the library. She had found that when she did this, Otho, especially now that he had a friend with him, would sometimes stroll in towards evening and sit for an hour. This afternoon he did so, followed by Gilbert. They had been shooting, said they were thirsty, and craved for tea, which she gave them. If Eleanor looked grave in these days, the gravity was partly caused by the fact that she could not reconcile the Gilbert Langstroth of whom she had heard so much, and from so many persons, with the Gilbert Langstroth who was Otho’s guest, and her own frequent companion. She naturally abhorred what she had heard of him; she had received him with cold civility, and was in every way disposed to keep him at a distance and cherish exalted thoughts of his brother. But she had found it impossible. Strongly biassed though she was against Gilbert, and for Michael, she could not succeed in finding Gilbert detestable. Reason as she would, she could not make herself find him personally disagreeable, or be bored, vexed, or harassed by his company. He had great power, she had had to confess—power to make himself welcome, looked for, agreeable, his opinion valuable, and his influence desired; while his marvellous command over Otho called forth her gratitude, and forced her into an attitude of half-cordial, half-reluctant civility to him and respect for him. It was the effort to reconcile this Gilbert Langstroth who had suddenly appeared in her life, with the Gilbert Langstroth of years ago, of whom and of whose treachery one uniform story was everywhere told, that helped to make her grave, and gave a shade of embarrassment to her manner towards him. CHAPTER XXIII QUARREL