evenings after, but still she did not carry out her threat of never speaking to him again. But when he met the other, as he now did perpetually, it was not in human nature to preserve an unbroken amiability. He let Rivers see by many a silent indication that he hated him, and found him in his way. He became disagreeable, poor boy, by dint of rivalry and the galling sense he had of the advantages possessed by the new-comer. He would go so far as to sneer at travellers’ tales, and hint a doubt that there might be another version of such and such an incident. When he had been guilty of suggestions of this kind he was overpowered with shame. But it is very hard to be generous to a man who has the better of you in every way; who is handsomer, cleverer, even taller; can talk far better, can amuse people whom you only bore; and when you attempt to argue can turn you, alas! inside out with a touch of his finger. The prudent thing for Roland to have done would have been to abstain from any comparison of himself with his accomplished adversary; but he was not wise enough to do this: few, very few, young men are so wise. He was always presenting his injured, offended, clouded face, by the side of the fine features and serene, secure look of the elder man, who was thus able to contemplate him, and, worse, to present him to others, in the aspect of a mad youngster, irritable and unreasoning. Roland was acutely, painfully aware that this was not his character at all, and yet that he had the appearance of it, and that Rosalind no doubt must consider him so. The union of pain, resentment, indignation at the thought of such injustice, with a sense that it scarcely was injustice, and that he was doing everything to justify it, made the poor young fellow as miserable as can be imagined. He did not deserve to be so looked upon, and yet he did deserve it; and Rivers was an intolerable prig and tyrant, using a giant’s strength villainously as a giant, yet in a way which was too cunning to afford any opening for reproach. He could have wept in his sense of the intolerable, and yet he had not a word to say. Was there ever a position more difficult to bear? And poor Roland felt that he had lost ground in every way. Ever since that unlucky interference of his and disclosure of his private information (which he saw now was the silliest thing that could have been done) there was no lingering in the fire-light, no _tête-à-tête_ ever accorded to him. When Mrs. Lennox went to dress for dinner, Rosalind went too. After a while she ceased to show her displeasure, and talked to him as usual when they met in the presence of the family, but he saw her by herself no more. He could not make out indeed whether _that_ fellow was ever admitted to any such privilege, but it certainly was extended to himself no more.