Chiming in so appropriately with his own fears, this vision or fancy of Nouna’s disturbed George a little. He calmed her excitement as well as he could, and found some comfort in the fact that the crafty Oriental had appeared to her, not as the kindly friend he had always professed to be, but as a person inspiring horror. This seemed the more remarkable as George had never mentioned the name of Rahas to his wife since their wedding-day; he came, after a little reflection, to look upon the vision as a proof of the new sympathy which Nouna began to show with his own feelings, and to rejoice in the fact that as the bond between him and his wife grew stronger under the influence of his patient tenderness, the power of any enemy to disturb their happiness was proportionately lessened. This home peace, which was attaching Lauriston to his young wife more strongly every day, was the more grateful to him, as his duties at the Bank were rendered as irksome as possible to him through the prejudice of his chief, Mr. Gurton, who never forgave the rejection of his own candidate for the junior clerk’s post, and who scarcely concealed his wish to find against him some lawful ground of dissatisfaction. This George was careful not to give. Mr. Gurton was one of those disagreeable brutes who seem to be created as foils to show up the amiability and sweetness of ordinary humanity. He was offensive to his few friends; he was unendurable to the far greater number of people whom nothing but necessity threw in his way. But as a man of business he was clear-headed, shrewd, and enterprising, so exact and penetrating that even if he drank, as his many detractors alleged, there seemed to be no particular reason why he should not, as his business faculties could not be said to be less keen at one time than at another. He hated Lauriston from the first, bullied him on the smallest or on no occasion, and did all in his power to induce the young fellow to throw up his appointment. George took soft words and sour with dogged quietness, and applied himself with all the energy of his character to mastering every detail connected with his new profession, as serenely as if incivility had been his daily bread for years. As a matter of fact, the discourtesy and fault-finding of his chief did not trouble him much; he looked upon Gurton, not without reason, as an ill-bred brute whom one could only turn to account by noting the methods by which he had attained such a splendid dexterity in the management of affairs, and by thus considering him in the light of a noisy machine it was easy to take the sting out of his insults. At the same time this constant friction or avoidance of friction in his business life made home and wife doubly dear and sweet to him.