ppear that
he considered the company not worth the trouble of his energy. He
was averse to dictate when the place did not seem to him to justify
dictation, and as those subjects on which people wished to hear
him speak were such as he was accustomed to treat with decision,
he generally shunned the traps there were laid to allure him into
discussion, and, by doing so, not infrequently subjected himself to
such charges as those brought against him by Mrs. Grantly.

Mr. Arabin, as he sat at his open window, enjoying the delicious
moonlight and gazing at the gray towers of the church, which stood
almost within the rectory grounds, little dreamed that he was the
subject of so many friendly or unfriendly criticisms. Considering
how much we are all given to discuss the characters of others, and
discuss them often not in the strictest spirit of charity, it is
singular how little we are inclined to think that others can speak
ill-naturedly of us, and how angry and hurt we are when proof reaches
us that they have done so. It is hardly too much to say that we all
of us occasionally speak of our dearest friends in a manner in which
those dearest friends would very little like to hear themselves
mentioned, and that we nevertheless expect that our dearest friends
shall invariably speak of us as though they were blind to all our
faults, but keenly alive to every shade of our virtues.

It did not occur to Mr. Arabin that he was spoken of at all. It
seemed to him, when he compared himself with his host, that he was a
person of so little consequence to any, that he was worth no one's
words or thoughts. He was utterly alone in the world as regarded
domestic ties and those inner familiar relations which are hardly
possible between others than husbands and wives, parents and children,
or brothers and sisters. He had often discussed with himself the
necessity of such bonds for a man's happiness in this world, and had
generally satisfied himself with the answer that happiness in this
world is not a necessity. Herein he deceived himself, or rather tried
to do so. He, like others, yearned for the enjoyment of whatever he
saw enjoyable, and though he attempted, with the modern stoicism of
so many Christians, to make himself believe that joy and sorrow were
matters which here should be held as perfectly indifferent, these
things were not indifferent to him. He was tired of his Oxford rooms
and his college life. He regarded the wife and children