But he showed no sign of being even momentarily under such an influence as suggested its presence in some of the ways she knew so well. She felt that he was not in love with her, and she was glad that he was not. There is no such breaking up of friendship as love, and she felt that one suggestion of love on his part--one glance of love’s admiration--would have been enough to prevent her from looking forward to a hard-and-fast friendship with this young man of great interests in life. He had treated her all along in exactly the right spirit of companionship. There had not been a false note in their interchange of words. Their sympathies were alike, and their sense of humour. But she had noticed that there had been a certain lack of enthusiasm in the tone of his voice when referring to some matters upon which she would have been disposed to speak with warmth; there was the shrug of a man who has seen a good deal, in some of the things that he had said; and she had felt that his experiences, whatever they had been, had tended to make him too tolerant, and toleration she had good reason to believe was mostly the result of laziness. He was the sort of man who underrated his own powers, and was therefore disinclined to be active in the exercise of such ability as he possessed. And then this farseeing young woman perceived that his grandfather had made a mistake in his over-anxiety to avoid one. If Jack Wingfield had entered upon possession of his property when he was six years younger he might have set about its management with enthusiasm, but in the interregnum to which he was forced to submit he had lost (she believed) something of the sanguine nature of the very young, which often causes them to do better work than they feel inclined ever to set their hand to later on. But then she reflected that, however tolerant he had shown himself to be in talking of things in general, he had been as warm as she could possibly have wished in his criticism of the “best set” in Framsby and the empty arrogance of its leaders. Possibly it was her recollection of this fact that caused her to feel that she had never yet met a man on whose behalf she would do all that it was possible for her to do--it was with regret that she reflected upon how little it was in her power to do for him. She hoped that he would before long show the people around him who thought him a fool, that he was very far removed from being a fool. She did not stop to think if her anxiety on his behalf might not possibly have its origin in the feeling that if he proved himself too sapient he could hardly be guilty of the folly of striking up a friendship with her.