Sir Launcelot Trevor was a man of a different stamp. He had bold handsome features, black hair, black eyes, and low forehead, a face with those sharp contrasts of colour some people think handsome. But there was something in him from which, even as a child, I shrank, although he paid the most finished compliments to the Lady Lucy, Lettice, and me, and to everything we did or said. His compliments always seemed to me like insults. When Harry Davenant spoke of Beauty in women, or pictures, or nature, he made you feel it something akin to God and truth, to reverence and give thanks for. When Sir Launcelot spoke of Beauty, he made you feel it a thing akin to the dust, to be fingered and smelt and tasted, and then to fade and perish. Harry Davenant's was a polish bringing out the grain, as in fine old oak. Sir Launcelot's was like a glittering crust of ice over a stagnant pond, with occasionally a flaw giving you a glimpse into the black depths beneath. But I suppose it was the way in which he behaved to Roger that more than anything opened my eyes to what he was. So that, behind all his bland smiles on us, I always seemed to see the curl of the mocking smile with which he so often addressed Roger. From the first they seemed to recognize each other as antagonists. Two days after his coming Sir Walter's bull was to be baited in a field near the village. Lettice and I were standing in the hall porch, debating whether we ought at once to report to Lady Lucy a dangerous adventure from which we had just escaped, or whether it would alarm her too much, when we heard voices approaching in eager and rather angry conversation. First Sir Walter's rather scornful,-- "Let the boy alone. If his father chose to bring him up as a monk or a mercer it is no concern of yours or mine." Then Sir Launcelot's smooth tones. "Far from it. Is there not indeed something quite amiable in such compassion as Mr. Roger displays for your bull? In a woman it would be irresistible. Should we not almost regret that the hardening years are too likely to destroy that delightful tenderness?" Then Roger's voice, monotonous and low, as always when he was much moved. "I see nothing more manly, Sir Launcelot, in tormenting a bull than a cockchafer, when neither of them can escape. My Father says it is not so much because it is savage, as because it is mean, that he will have nothing to do with cock-fighting or bear and bull baiting." Then a chorus of indignant disclaimers of the comparison from the boys. "If you are too tender to stand a bull-baiting, how would you like a battle?" But the next moment little Lettice, sweet, generous Lettice (herself Roger's prime tormentor when he was left to her), confronting the whole company--the five brothers and Sir Launcelot--and seizing her father's hand in both hers, exclaimed,--