The boy, though unaccustomed to any such _exigeant_ demands on his respectful attention, from his mother, nor trained to yield them unasked, shook off Marryott's arm, still encircling his waist, and willingly obeyed, running to comply with the request. Mrs. Trevor left the room as Eustace had done not long before, in silence, and with a swelling heart, whilst Mrs. Marryott's glance after her retreating figure, seemed to ask what was the meaning of this undue assumption of importance in her unassuming mistress. * * * * * The same partial fate which attended the young Eustace under his father's roof, extended itself to his life at school. In the rather inferior establishment to which he, and his younger brother were sent--one very unworthy and inefficient to develope the genius and talent, inherent in the boy--qualities which nevertheless struggled forth, spite of all disadvantages, into life and power, too little appreciated by others--there the favour of the sycophant master, was lavished exclusively on the rich father's favourite, to the apparent detriment and depreciation of the other. The high and generous spirit of the boy, was reported as ill-disposed and unruly, and treated accordingly with severity, or more properly speaking, tyranny and injustice. A crushing or hardening effect upon the mind and character, must have inevitably been the result of such a process, had it not been for the superior nature of the being upon whom it worked; to say nothing of that counter charm which ever lay upon his heart, a talisman against the power of every evil influence--his mother's love. But there was one effect produced by the state of things we have endeavoured to show forth, which could not be averted. We mean the seed of future misery, thereby sown between the youthful brothers. In early childhood there had subsisted between them an affection almost bordering upon enthusiasm, remarkable in children of their age; in the younger how soon, like every other good and truthful inclination of his heart and character, contracted and undermined by the still more pernicious influence to which by his different circumstances he was exposed. It might have been supposed that were the invidious feelings of envy, or jealousy, to be engendered in either mind by the system of partiality to which they were subjected in such a lamentable degree, it would have been in that of the least favoured; but jealousy belonged not to the noble nature of Eustace.