He pleaded, coldly, an appointment with a friend, and after a few words with Leo withdrew to a further apartment. Leo had taken in the slight, brief, yet significant episode in all its bearings, hating himself meanwhile for his own shrewdness, which he considered a mark of latent meanness. Reuben returned thoughtfully, if quite composedly, to the discussion of his roast pheasant and potato chips. His method of wiping out a snub was the grandly simple one of making a conquest of the snubber. Persons less completely equipped for the battle of life have been known to prefer certain defeat to the chances of such a victory. But Reuben was possessed of a bottomless fund of silent energy, of quiet resistance and persistence, which had stood him ere now in good stead under like circumstances. He appraised Lord Norwood very justly; recognized instinctively the charms of mind and manner which had cast such glamour over him in his cousin’s eyes; recognized also his limitations, with an irritated consciousness that he, Reuben, was being judged at a far less open-minded tribunal. In such cases, it is always the more intelligent person who is at a disadvantage--he appreciates, and is not appreciated. I have no intention of following out Reuben’s relations with Lord Norwood, throughout which, it may be added, he had little to gain, even in the matter of social prestige, for he numbered people far more important among his acquaintance. But it was not long before an invitation to Norwood Towers was given and accepted. By one at least of the people concerned however, the circumstances which had marked the earlier stages of their acquaintance were never forgotten. * * * * * A few days later saw Leo back at Trinity with his lexicon, his violin, and the friend of his heart. Here he alternately worked furiously and gave himself up to spells of complete idleness; to sauntering, sociable days spent in cheerful, excited discussion of the vexed problems of the universe, or long days of moody solitude. At these latter times he pondered deeply on the unsatisfactoriness of life in general, and of his own life in particular, and underwent a good many uncomfortable sensations which he ascribed to a hopeless passion for his friend’s sister. Lady Geraldine Sydenham was a gentle, kindly, cultivated young woman, who had not the faintest idea of having inspired any one with hopeless passion, least of all young Leuniger. She was two or three years older than Leo--a thin, pale person, with faint colouring, a rather receding chin, and slightly prominent teeth. She dressed dowdily, and even Leo did not credit her with being pretty. Indeed he took a fanciful pleasure in dwelling on the fact that she was plain, and in quoting to himself the verse from Browning’s _Too Late_: