y praising him.

"The young man has a good opinion of himself certainly."

"He thinks himself to be a deal better than anybody else," continued
Jones, "whereas I for one don't see it. And he has a way with him of
pretending to be quite equal to his companions, let them be who they
may, which to me is odious. He was down upon you and down upon your
father. Of course your father has made a most fraudulent attempt; but
what the devil is it to him?" The other young man made no answer, but
only smiled. The opinion expressed by Mr. Jones as to Harry Annesley had
only been a reflex of that felt by Augustus Scarborough. But the reflex,
as is always the case when the looking-glass is true, was correct.

Scarborough had known Harry Annesley for a long time, as time is counted
in early youth, and had by degrees learned to hate him thoroughly. He
was a little the elder, and had at first thought to domineer over his
friend. But the friend had resisted, and had struggled manfully to
achieve what he considered an equality in friendship. "Now, Scarborough,
you may as well take it once for all that I am not going to be talked
down. If you want to talk a fellow down you can go to Walker, Brown, or
Green. Then when you are tired of the occupation you can come back to
me." It was thus that Annesley had been wont to address his friend. But
his friend had been anxious to talk down this special young man for
special purposes, and had been conscious of some weakness in the other's
character which he thought entitled him to do so. But the weakness was
not of that nature, and he had failed. Then had come the rivalry between
Mountjoy and Harry, which had seemed to Augustus to be the extreme of
impudence. From of old he had been taught to regard his brother Mountjoy
as the first of young men--among commoners; the first in prospects and
the first in rank; and to him Florence Mountjoy had been allotted as a
bride. How he had himself learned first to envy and then to covet this
allotted bride need not here be told. But by degrees it had come to pass
that Augustus had determined that his spendthrift brother should fall
under his own power, and that the bride should be the reward. How it was
that two brothers, so different in character, and yet so alike in their
selfishness, should have come to love the same girl with a true
intensity of purpose, and that Harry Annesley, whose character was
essentially different, and who was in no degree selfish, shou