thing quite different from inoffensiveness of tone and diction.
Godwin appreciated the differentiating cause. These young ladies behind
him had been trained from the cradle to speak for the delight of
fastidious ears; that they should be grammatical was not enough--they
must excel in the art of conversational music. Of course there existed
a world where only such speech was interchanged, and how inestimably
happy those men to whom the sphere was native!

When the proceedings were over, he drew aside and watched the two girls
as they mingled with acquaintances; he kept them in view until they
left the College. An emotion such as this he had never known; for the
first time in his life he was humiliated without embitterment.

The bitterness came when he had returned to his home in the back street
of Twybridge, and was endeavouring to spend the holidays in a hard
'grind'. He loathed the penurious simplicity to which his life was
condemned; all familiar circumstances were become petty, coarse,
vulgar, in his eyes; the contrast with the idealised world of his
ambition plunged him into despair: Even Mr. Gunnery seemed an ignoble
figure when compared with the Professors of Whitelaw, and his authority
in the sciences was now subjected to doubt. However much or little
might result from the three years at College, it was clear to Godwin
that his former existence had passed into infinite remoteness; he was
no longer fit for Twybridge, no longer a companion for his kindred.
Oliver, whose dulness as a schoolboy gave no promise of future
achievements, was now learning the business of a seedsman; his brother
felt ashamed when he saw him at work in the shop, and had small
patience with the comrades to whom Oliver dedicated his leisure.
Charlotte was estranged by religious differences. Only for his mother
did the young man show increased consideration. To his aunt he
endeavoured to be grateful, but his behaviour in her presence was
elaborate hypocrisy. Hating the necessity for this, he laid the blame
on fortune, which had decreed his birth in a social sphere where he
must ever be an alien.

CHAPTER III

With the growth of his militant egoism, there had developed in Godwin
Peak an excess of nervous sensibility which threatened to deprive his
character of the initiative rightly belonging to it. Self-assertion is
the practical complement of self-esteem. To be largely endowed with the
latter quality, yet constrained by a coward del