ideas. It follows that, in the
scale of characters, Hermione held the mean between the two brothers.
Compared with Paul's powerful nature, her qualities were those of a
woman; in comparison with Alexander's delicate organization of mind,
Hermione's character was more like that of a man. The effect of this
singular scale of personalities was, that when she found herself
alternately in the society of the two brothers she felt as though she
were alternately two different women. To a man entering a house on a
bitter winter's night the hall seems comfortably warm; but it seems
cold to a man who has been sitting over a fire in a hermetically sealed
study.

Now Hermione had loved Paul when he was practically the only man of
those she had ever known intimately whom she believed it possible to
love at all. But she had seen very little of the world, and had known
very few men. Her first recollections of society were indistinct, and no
one individual had made any more impression upon her than another,
perhaps because she was in reality not very impressionable. But Paul was
preeminently a man able to impress himself upon others when he chose. He
had come to Carvel Place, had loved his cousin, and she had returned his
love with a readiness which had surprised herself. It was genuine in its
way, and she knew that it was; nor could she doubt that Paul was in
earnest, since a word from her had sufficed to make him curtail his
visit, and go to the ends of the earth to find his brother. Hermione
more than once wished that she had never spoken that word.

She now entered upon a new phase of her life, she saw a new sort of
society, and she met a man who upset in a moment all her convictions
about men in general. The result of all this novelty was that she began
to look at life from a different point of view. Alexander amused her,
and at the same time he made her feel of more importance in her own
eyes. He talked well, but he made her fancy that she herself talked
better. His thoughts were subtle, though not always logical, and his
quick instincts gave him an immense advantage over people of slower
intelligence. He knew all this himself, perhaps; at all events, he used
his gifts in the cleverest possible way. He possessed the power to
attract Hermione without dominating her; in other words, he made her
like him of her own free will.

She liked him very much, and she felt that there was no harm in it. He
was the brother of her future hus