"He does it grand, does he not?" cried Roland, who had made one advance towards making friends with his brother since coming to London, and was not responded to in kind. Miss Channing laughed. Gerald Yorke had entered on some kind of public career and was very prosperous, she believed, moving amidst the great ones of the land. Roland, quite forgetting where he was, or perhaps not caring, set up a whistle by way of attracting the attention of Gerald, who turned amidst others at the strange sound. "How d'ye do, Gerald, old boy? Come and shake hands." The voice was loud, glad, hearty; the great hand, with its great white glove drawn up over it, minus a button, was stretched above intervening heads. Gerald Yorke's face grew dark with the light of annoyance, and he hesitated before making the best of the situation, and getting near enough to shake the offered hand. He would far rather have become conveniently deaf, and walked off in an opposite direction. Alike though the brothers were in general personal resemblance, no contrast could be greater than they presented in other respects. Gerald, fine and fashionable, with his aristocratic air and his slow, affected drawl, was the very type of all that is false of that insincerity and heartlessness obtaining in what is called society. Roland, hot, thoughtless, never weighing a word before he spoke it, impulsive, genuine, utterly unsophisticated as to the usages and manners that go to make up the meetings of fashionable life, was just as single-hearted and true. Gerald, as Roland put it, "went in" for grandeur, and he was already prejudiced against his brother. In a communication from Lord Carrick, apologizing for not being able to answer satisfactorily Gerald's appeal for a loan, that nobleman had confidentially avowed that he could not at present assist even Roland effectually, and had got him a place as clerk temporarily, to save him from embarking in the hot-pie line. It may therefore be readily understood that Gerald did not consider an intimacy with Roland likely to conduce to his own advancement (to say nothing of respectability) and his annoyance and surprise at seeing him now where he did were about equally great. The hands were shaken, and a few words of greeting passed; warm and open on Roland's part, cool and cautious on Gerald's. A friend of Gerald's, the Honourable Mr. Somebody, who was by his side and begged for an introduction, was more cordial than he. "I have not seen him since we parted seven years ago, when I went off to Port Natal," explained Roland with his accustomed candour. "Haven't I had ups and downs since then, Gerald!" he continued, turning his beaming face upon his brother. "You have heard of them I dare say, through Carrick." "You did not make a fortune," drawled Gerald, wishing he could get away.