" asks the Master one day.

And Mr. Henry, who had been goaded by the man all morning, raps out: "I
will not."

"I sometimes wish you would be kinder, Henry," says the other wistfully.

I give this for a specimen; but such scenes befell continually. Small
wonder if Mr. Henry was blamed; small wonder if I fretted myself into
something near upon a bilious fever; nay, and at the mere recollection
feel a bitterness in my blood.

Sure, never in this world was a more diabolical contrivance: so
perfidious, so simple, so impossible to combat. And yet I think again,
and I think always, Mrs. Henry might have read between the lines; she
might have had more knowledge of her husband's nature; after all these
years of marriage she might have commanded or captured his confidence.
And my old lord, too--that very watchful gentleman--where was all his
observation? But, for one thing, the deceit was practised by a master
hand, and might have gulled an angel. For another (in the case of Mrs.
Henry), I have observed there are no persons so far away as those who
are both married and estranged, so that they seem out of earshot, or to
have no common tongue. For a third (in the case of both of these
spectators), they were blinded by old ingrained predilection. And for a
fourth, the risk the Master was supposed to stand in (supposed, I
say--you will soon hear why) made it seem the more ungenerous to
criticise; and, keeping them in a perpetual tender solicitude about his
life, blinded them the more effectually to his faults.

It was during this time that I perceived most clearly the effect of
manner, and was led to lament most deeply the plainness of my own. Mr.
Henry had the essence of a gentleman; when he was moved, when there was
any call of circumstance, he could play his part with dignity and
spirit; but in the day's commerce (it is idle to deny it) he fell short
of the ornamental. The Master (on the other hand) had never a movement
but it commended him. So it befell that when the one appeared gracious
and the other ungracious, every trick of their bodies seemed to call out
confirmation. Not that alone: but the more deeply Mr. Henry floundered
in his brother's toils, the more clownish he grew; and the more the
Master enjoyed his spiteful entertainment, the more engagingly, the more
smilingly, he went! So that the plot, by its own scope and progress,
furthered and confirmed itself.

It was one of the man's arts to use the peril in which