ive?
Certainly not a man of Trenholme's stamp.

It is a mistake to suppose that decision and fearlessness are always the
attributes of strength. Angels will hover in the equipoise of indecision
while clowns will make up their minds. Many a fool will rush in to woo
and win a woman, who makes her after-life miserable by inconsiderate
dealings with incongruous circumstance, in that very unbending temper of
mind through which he wins at first. Trenholme did not love the less,
either as lover or brother, because he shrank, as from the galling of an
old wound, when the family trade was touched upon. He was not a weaker
man because he was capable of this long suffering. That nature has the
chance to be the strongest whose sensibilities have the power to draw
nourishment of pain and pleasure from every influence; and if such soul
prove weak by swerving aside because of certain pains, because of
stooping from the upright posture to gain certain pleasures, it still
may not be weaker than the more limited soul who knows not such
temptations. If Trenholme had swerved from the straight path, if he had
stooped from the height which nature had given him, the result of his
fault had been such array of reasons and excuses that he did not now
know that he was in fault, but only had hateful suspicion of it when he
was brought to the pass of explaining himself to his lady-love. The
murmurs of an undecided conscience seldom take the form of definite
self-accusation. They did not now; and Trenholme's suspicion that he was
in the wrong only obtruded itself in the irritating perception that his
trouble had a ludicrous side. It would have been easier for him to have
gone to Sophia with confession of some family crime or tragedy than to
say to her, "My father was, my brother is, a butcher; and I have allowed
this fact to remain untold!" It was not that he did not intend to prove
to her that his silence on this subject was simply wise; he still
writhed under the knowledge that such confession, if it did not evoke
her loving sympathy, might evoke her merriment.

That afternoon, however, he made a resolution to speak to Sophia before
another twenty-four hours had passed--a resolution which was truly
natural in its inconsistency; for, after having waited for months to
hear Alec's purpose, he to-day decided to act without reference to him.
At the thought of the renewed solicitation of another lover, his own
love and manliness triumphed over everythi