He had, not unnaturally, been jealous of me ever since his sister began to care more for me than she did for him. I think most brothers--and especially most twin-brothers--would have felt the same in the circumstances; and I, for one, did not blame him as I--in my turn--was jealous of him. But with most brothers it would have stopped there: few would have taken the awful responsibility of endeavouring to come between their married sisters and those sisters' husbands. But that was where Frank Wildacre differed from the ordinary run of mortals; that was where the elfin strain in him came in. His utter lack of any sense of responsibility, and his absolute disregard of consequences, sometimes seemed to me hardly human: just as his husky, girlish voice and his delicate complexion made it impossible to realise that he was now less of a boy than of a man, and therefore ought to think as a man, and to put away childish things. He must have known--for he was no longer a child, although he behaved as such--that a permanent estrangement between Fay and myself could only end in misery for her, and therefore, indirectly, for him. For my feelings in the matter I did not expect him to show any regard; although I had been sincerely attached to and attracted by him, I had sufficient acuteness to perceive that he had no real affection for me, or indeed for anybody except himself--unless, perhaps, for his sister; and his love for her was entirely a selfish love. I do not believe he cared an atom about her happiness, except in so far as it ministered to his own: but I should have credited him with sufficient sense to realise that Fay's marriage was, on the whole, a good thing for him as well as for her from a worldly point of view: and Frank was certainly not accustomed to look at anything from an altruistic standpoint. Had his jealousy goaded him to oppose Fay's marriage in the first instance, I could have understood it. But it did not. It was only when the thing was a _fait accompli_ and my darling's fate was sealed that--with Puck-like perversity--he set about making her dissatisfied with it. Herein he was--as might have been expected--the exact opposite of Annabel. Before I had asked Fay to marry me, my sister tried her utmost to dissuade me from so doing: but when once we were married, she did all in her power--even to the point of nearly quarrelling with me--to prevent us from drifting apart. But then there was nothing impish or Puck-like about Annabel. I admit that I watched Frank's veiled antagonism to myself with increasing uneasiness. I realised the strength of the call of kinship too fully to be able to defy its influence: and as I gradually came to understand that this influence was hostile to my life's happiness, I trembled at what suffering might be in store for myself, and for Fay who was dearer to me than myself.