Evelyn's mind and character were in many respects a complete enigma to the General. He could not fathom her; could not grasp the complexities of a nature so unlike his own. It was not his fault. A short-sighted man cannot fairly be blamed for not seeing so far as a long-sighted man. The General, with all his real goodness and nobleness, had a narrow make of mind, a contracted mental vision. And at sixty-two or sixty-three years of age, he was incapable of gauging his young wife of twenty-five. She had not yet come to her full growth. She was expanding, gaining fresh knowledge, assimilating new thoughts, year by year. He had been petrified early into a permanent shape; and for thirty or forty years past, he had almost ceased to expand. How could the two minds suit? Evelyn's restless thought, her searching into the foundations of statements which he accepted en bloc, her eager listening to fresh theories, her weariness of religious strifes and factious oppositions—all of these he resolved with sorrowful haste into "dangerous tendencies," and to all of these, he set himself in resolute opposition. He was indeed most willing to discuss vexed questions with her; and he would never, like many men, forget his gentlemanliness in the heat of argument; but he always began and ended with the assumption that he himself was inevitably right, and he had no power to see her side of the matter. So it came to pass that Evelyn fell into a habit of systematically evading all discussion; not merely all religious discussion, which under the circumstances was no doubt her wisest course, but all discussion of most everyday matters. If he found fault, she offered no defence. If he misjudged her, she attempted no explanation. It was "no use," she told herself. Such a state of things, which in any other relationship of life would be hardly more than endurable, when existing between a husband and wife could not but result in distress and isolation. CHAPTER IV. A STRIFE FOR THE MASTERY. "Fie, fie! Unknit that threatening unkind brow; And dart not scornful glances from those eyes." SHAKESPEARE. SYBELLA's exercise of authority over Cyril had reached the limit of her tether. The pull had been too strong, inducing a new resistance which, once started, was not likely to die down. From childhood, the home training of the young baronet had been, in effect, "Do as you like; follow your own inclinations—" with the sole exceptions implied by the care of his health, and the choice of his friends. He was to nurse and coddle his body; he was to like those people whom Sybella liked; which two exceptions might involve the occasional crossing of his inclinations; but in all other respects he was to gratify himself. Such a mode of training would naturally, would almost of necessity, recoil in time upon the trainer. Arbitrary exceptions to a general rule of self-pleasing are not likely to stand.