Lady Brent told Wilbraham about him afterwards, what his family was and where they came from, which was near her own girlhood’s home. "I must say that I am relieved," she said. "On her father’s side her birth to all intents and purposes is as good as Harry’s, and on her mother’s it is no worse. It counts for something. I married before Michael—that is his real name, and I suppose suggested the Angelo to his freakish imagination—before he grew up, but I was always hearing stories of his wildness and extravagance afterwards. There was never much real harm in him, and there were some very good qualities to balance what harm there was. His parents were over-strict with him, but they were fond of him, and I think if he hadn’t taken offence at their attitude towards his marriage, in which of course they were amply justified, they would have come round in time." "It may have been better for him that they didn’t," said Wilbraham. "He’s had to make his own living, which has probably been salutary for him, and his responsibility to Viola has kept him fairly straight. I wish he didn’t drink quite so much whisky or smoke such vile tobacco, but drink hasn’t taken hold of him so much as I thought it had at one time. If he had been anything like what you’d call a drunkard it would have affected Viola more. What do you think of Viola?" "I’m glad she came to Royd, and that Harry met her," she said. *CHAPTER XXVIII* *IN THE BALANCE* So far Harry had been brought in his life’s story. The gods had showered their gifts upon him. They had given him strength and beauty; a mind quick to receive their messages and eager to interpret them; a heart that went out to others and drew others to it; largesse of temporal favours, which they scatter here and there but are apt to withhold from those whom they endow with their choicest gifts. His manhood had been tried in a hard school, had been established and wrought to finer issues by it. He had known great happiness, and also suffering both of mind and body, without which happiness itself is but a monochrome. He had entered the high courts of love, and worshipped in them devoutly. For what had they prepared him, on whom they had smiled, not so uniformly as to soften his fine fibre, but as if they would have cherished so rare an example of their handiwork, and led it towards still higher desert of their bounties? Would they not watch over him and preserve him from the ultimate dangers which youth was plunging to meet at this point in the world’s long history? Or is the world’s history itself a mere point in time, as it unrolls itself before their unwearying eyes, so that it matters not what destruction may be wrought in it, since there is infinity in which to forge new combinations of flesh and brain and fortune?