‘I don’t think,’ he said once with unwonted gravity, ‘I don’t think I could ever go far wrong, for fear of breaking her heart.’ He spoke of his sister too, the beautiful girl, so like her mother, whose portrait hung above the mantelshelf; she was only a year younger than himself, and they had never been separated until he went to school, and he wrote to her every week; she was so thoughtful, that he always consulted her about everything in his life, and found her opinion better than anybody’s--except his father’s. Once he held out the hope of inviting Gerald to stay for a few days at Helmsbury in the holidays, but the idea was forgotten, or some difficulty came in the way of it, and the invitation did not arrive. Gerald was partly disappointed, but partly relieved, as he did not know exactly how he should adapt himself to the ways of aristocratic society. One reason, no doubt, why Gerald clung so passionately to Harry Venniker was that he was himself not understood by masters or boys. Mr. Brandiston in particular misunderstood him. He liked, as has been said, a boy who worked upon the regular recognised lines of school life. He preferred a boy who was first in his form to one who was second; and a boy who was second, to one who was third. It was his opinion that Gerald, as being an elected scholar, ought to be first. With the studies which occupied so much of Gerald’s time and thought in the library he did not sympathise. Happening one day to come upon him when he was reading Lyell’s ‘Elements of Geology,’ he told him he had better not waste his time. That Gerald’s ability was remarkable he did not doubt. But he thought it might be better employed. He wrote to Mr. Eversley that he wished his son (with whom he had, as he admitted, no positive fault to find) would ‘concentrate himself more,’ and would not be ‘always taking up some new subject that did not bring in any marks.’ The association of Harry and Gerald, in one sense, did not appear to him to have been entirely successful. It had left Harry a healthy, bright, athletic boy; that was well enough. But it had left Gerald what he was at the first--awkward, shy, erratic, studious, recluse. Mr. Brandiston was not wrong in his view of his two pupils; but was he right? _Summum jus_, says the proverb, _summa injuria_. The teacher’s profession demands a fine combination of qualities. It needs justice, and justice Mr. Brandiston possessed; the suspicion of favouritism, that one unpardonable offence among boys, never attached itself to his name, and justice, standing by itself, satisfies the needs of ordinary boys--and ordinary boys or men are always (fortunately for the world) the large majority--but there are the few who need not justice only, but the tender, sympathetic insight which is, if any human grace is, the gift of God, and this was not Mr. Brandiston’s. Between him, then, and his strange pupil the gulf widened, slowly, almost imperceptibly, but it widened.