"I wonder you do not feel more for him. It must be horribly hard to know so much is against one. I'm not sure that I could stand it myself." "I don't know that you could," said Winifred, composedly. "What makes you say so? Aren't you ashamed of yourself, Winifred, just come from church, and going to teach those wretched little victims, with uncharitableness written on every hair of your head. Poor Marmaduke! Well, he gets on with your father better than I do." "I don't know that, really. Only you and papa have each your own hobby-horses, and instead of trotting comfortably along, you must go full tilt at each other. I am sure he was very proud when he heard you had won the Chancellor's medal. How nice it was of you, Anthony!" "You could not have cared much about it." "Why not?" asked Winifred, who knew what was coming. "You do not care for any poetry but the very best, you know." "That need not stand in the way," said Winifred, smiling, and holding out her olive-branch magnanimously, "and besides--" "Well?" "I was rather cross that night, Anthony." "At what?" "O, I don't know! How can one know what makes one cross? I think Mr Milman bored me. Were you bored, too?" "I don't believe I was. That Miss Lovell is pleasant enough." "Do you think so? She worries me by drawling the last word of every sentence, and it is all so very commonplace." "Well, perhaps it is commonplace, but one doesn't expect to find anything else." "If you like it, there is nothing to be said against it," said Winifred carelessly, still playing with the mulberry leaves. "Shall we go back? There is something I want to tell Bessie." "Wait a moment," said Anthony, not thinking much of what had been said. "Tell me, why did you say just now that you did not think I could stand being down in the world?" Winifred was silent. "Tell me," he urged, trying to look in her face. "I don't mean to go down. My belief is that circumstances are much more under our own control than we allow. Still, I should like to know why you made the assertion." "I suppose it is owing to that very belief you have just stated, and to your having such terrible faith in your own powers," said Winifred, speaking with a kind of sweet strength. "You think you are sure to get what you aim at because it is good and great. I have an idea that, the higher one aims, the less one will be satisfied with what is reached, and then it is called failure, and that seems to discourage some people utterly." "And you think I should be discouraged?" said Anthony. "It is better not to dream about failures. They generally belong to half-heartedness, so far as I can see." "Not all," said Winifred softly.