Perhaps it was scarcely possible that Edward should resist this temptation to inquire into Oswald’s degree of favour. He was not jealous. No, he thought, he felt sure that he was not jealous; but he was always the second, and no one likes that. He felt a slight passing sting and check when she spoke of Oswald, and in spite of himself could not but feel anxious to find out what degree of intimacy existed between them. ‘Do you say this to Oswald? Does he know?’ he added. ‘I never said anything,’ said Cara, recovering herself; ‘why should I? it was nonsense. And then Oswald has so much to tell me about _him_--it is much more amusing than to chatter about one’s self. Don’t think me very silly, Edward. It was because you seemed to want to know about _me_----’ ‘So I did,’ he said; ‘so I do, Cara. It was you and I that used to be the friends. Oswald was bigger, don’t you remember? It was always you and I----’ Cara made no direct reply to this representation. She even disregarded the anxious look he gave her, as he made this appeal to old recollections, of which she was not specially thinking at this moment for her part. ‘How different people are,’ she said. ‘Some people tell you about themselves; some make you talk, I don’t know how, of _you_. I don’t think you would have a good moral effect upon me, Edward. You make me selfish; you make me think of myself. Oswald does not ask about me. He makes me listen to him. Oh, it is very pleasant, and it must be better, I feel sure----’ ‘You like it better? I am such an uninteresting fellow, Cara, not like Oswald. I prefer to hear about you----’ ‘Thanks,’ she said, with a little shy glance at him, and a slight reddening which she could not explain. ‘Did you think poor Roger very rough and very strange last night? I hope you did not think badly of him. He was, perhaps, a little cross, but he is not like that always, not even often. I don’t think I ever saw him so cross before.’ ‘I understand him, Cara. He was an old friend, too, and he hoped to have you to himself; whereas he found you among still older friends than he was, and intimate, and at your ease. And he was not at all at his ease--I understand him. I have had the very same sort of thing happen to me.’ ‘With whom?’ Cara asked rather abruptly. She was surprised, even slightly nettled, without knowing why. Did Edward know any other girl well enough? she asked herself. It was nothing to her, and yet she was half-displeased. ‘Oh, with no one in particular,’ he said. ‘I have stolen a march upon Oswald,’ he added, with a laugh. ‘I have had the luck of the early bird. He was always a late fellow. To be sure, he sits up writing when the rest of us go to bed.’ ‘And is it true that he would not go to India, and put it upon you? I am very fond of poetry,’ said Cara; ‘I would rather be a poet than anything else in the world; but not to put the disagreeable work upon someone else--not to please myself at the expense of another----’