d this difference as great.
Should Alec persist in this thing, it would, in the first place,
endanger the success of his school, or alter his relation to that
school; in the second, it would make him more unworthy in the eyes of
all Sophia's well-born relatives. While he remained in suspense,
therefore, he was too honourable to seek to entangle her affections by
the small arts that are used for such purposes; for if the worst came,
he felt that he would be too proud to ask her to be his wife, or, if
love should overcome pride, and he should still sue for what he loved
better than life, he must do so before he sought her heart--not after;
he must lay his cause before the tribunal of Sophia's wit before she had
let go her heart--a thing that he, being what he was, had not courage to
do.

He was not "living a lie" (as his brother had said) any more than every
man does who allows his mind to dwell on the truth of what pleases him
more than on disagreeable truth. The fact that he was, by a distant tie
of consanguinity, related to a gentleman of some county position in
England was just as true, and to Trenholme's mind more largely true,
than the fact of his father's occupation. Yet he had never made this a
boast; he had never voluntarily stated the pleasant truth to any one to
whom he had not also told the unpleasant; and where he had kept silence
concerning the latter, he had done so by the advice of good men, and
with excuse concerning his professional influence. Yet, some way, he was
not sufficiently satisfied with all this to have courage to bring it
before Miss Rexford, nor yet was he prepared (and here was his worldly
disadvantage) to sacrifice his conscience to success. He would not ask
his brother to change, except in so far as he could urge that brother's
duty and advantage; he would not say to him, "Do this for my sake"; nor
yet would he say, "Go, then, to the other side of the world"; nor yet,
"You shall be no longer my brother."

Robert Trenholme was bearing a haunted life. The ghost was fantastic
one, truly--that of a butcher's shop; but it was a very real haunting.

CHAPTER VII.

The Rexford family was without a servant. Eliza, the girl they had
brought with them from Quebec, had gone to a situation at the Chellaston
hotel. The proprietor and manager of that large building, having become
lame with rheumatism, had been sorely in need of a lieutenant, or
housekeeper, and had chosen one with that shrewd