‘Do you know,’ said Michael, with the air of a man who announces something which will surprise his hearer, ‘I believe that if she were not engaged to me, Otho Askam would propose to her to-morrow.’ Roger looked at him with parted lips. Michael evidently thought the news would be as great a discovery to his friend as it had been to himself. ‘Well,’ observed Roger shortly, ‘you don’t mean to say you think that would be to her advantage?’ ‘Perhaps not, in some ways; but——’ ‘Not in any one way,’ almost shouted Roger, bringing his fist on to the table with a thump. ‘That would be Hyperion to a satyr, without the shadow of a doubt.’ ‘I know nothing about that,’ said Michael, still in the same dejected tone, ‘but I do know that she is all the world to me, and I cannot give her up; no, by Heaven, I cannot!’ He spoke with a flurry, an agitation, and a passion, most unlike his usual even cheerfulness. ‘Give her up? Who wants you to?’ ‘No one. It’s only my own conscience that sometimes suggests what I ought to do.’ ‘If your conscience suggests that, it is deceitful, and a blind guide. But come, Michael, old fellow, you are morbid to talk in this way. The idea of a man of six and twenty looking at things so darkly! Absurd! You have your life before you.’ He went on talking in this strain till he saw the cloud gradually clear from Michael’s brow, and heard him admit that he was sure he must be a fool; and so, begin to look a little brisker. But Roger was thoughtful as he went about his work. ‘Give her up!’ he said to himself. ‘He’ll never give her up till she flings him off. Poor Michael! That is the only cure for him; and perhaps it wouldn’t be one, after all. Should I be brute enough to wish it for him?’ And then he thought about the change in Michael’s face, so altered from its youthful pride and carelessness; but, as it seemed to Roger, more beautiful now, with the graver, broader seal of manhood stamped upon it—that seal which care never lets out of her fingers, and which she is perpetually imprinting on every brow that carries on it a line worth reading. If Roger were concerned about the change in Michael, Michael, on his part, was much struck—concerned, is hardly the word—by what seemed to him a great alteration in Gilbert. It appeared as if hard work suited Gilbert as well as it did Roger, for the more his business grew, the livelier he became. ‘Lively?’ said Miss Wynter, to whom Michael had one evening been speaking on the subject. ‘Yes, lively. It’s the only word I can find with which to describe the change; and I don’t wonder that you exclaim at it, for “lively” is hardly a word that fits Gilbert, is it?’ ‘No, indeed! Pray, what shape does the liveliness take?’ asked Magdalen, who appeared almost interested.