It is scarcely possible for any eyes but those of a parent (and even the eyes of a parent are not always impartial) to look upon two young candidates for favour with exactly the same sentiments. If it is too much to say that one will be loved and the other hated, at least the balance will be unequal. Edward had found means from the beginning to please his patroness and relative. He had been—is not this the grand reason?—so good: he had been ready at her service when she wanted him, he had stayed at home, he had been son and daughter to the lonely woman. All that she knew of him was excellent, and she had no reason to imagine there was anything to know which was not equally good.
Catherine was one of the people who say that they do not look for gratitude. If Edward had not appreciated the kindness which picked him up as it were from the roadside, she would but have laughed; she would not have shown either surprise or pain; but the fact that he did feel her kindness, and devote himself to her, touched her deeply. She was as well off as if he had been her son, far better off than many mothers with sons. But Harry was very different. For a long time she had made up her mind that Harry was her great failure. He and his sister had never attempted to attach themselves to Catherine. They had considered their elevation to the White House, and the honours of the bank, as owing to their own merits, and had set up a sort of heir-apparent establishment always in opposition. With the natural instinct of a woman, she had concluded it all to be Ellen’s fault; but Harry had not the good sense to separate himself from his sister, or even to imply that he did not support her in her proceedings: far from that, he stood by her with the utmost loyalty. Though he never was anything but deferential and respectful in his dull way to his benefactress, he never would allow it to be supposed that he did not approve of his sister and back her up. If Catherine saw the merit of this faithfulness, it was in a grudging way; and, as a matter of fact, she did not like Harry. There was nothing in reality to find fault with in him. He was very steady at his business, notwithstanding the rival claims of cricket in summer and football in winter. And when he was asked to dinner at the Grange, he was as punctual as clockwork, with an expanse of shirt front that would have been a credit to any man. But he did not please Catherine. He had given her a reproof which stung, on that occasion when he “took down” Mrs. John, without waiting to know what person of importance should have gone before. Nothing that could have been said would have stung Catherine so much as that good-natured act, and it was all the more hard upon her that in her heart (always a good and generous one) she approved Harry. It was a reproach to her, and still more, it was a reproach to Edward, who had never taken the slightest notice of Mrs. John’s presence, but left her among the neglected ones. Catherine had been doubly angry with Harry ever since that evening. She would not allow even that he was a handsome fellow.
“He is big enough,” she would say, resenting the fact that he was a head taller than Edward, and twice as strong. “He is a fine animal, if you like: but I don’t see how a man with white eyelashes can be considered handsome.”
Edward did not oppose his aunt in this any more than in other things. “I allow,” he would say, “that he is not clever.” But he shook his head, as one who would deprecate a too true accusation when Miss Vernon held Harry up to ridicule. “No, he is not clever; he will never set the Thames on fire,” Edward said.
Miss Vernon saw Harry pass the third time he went to the Vernonry, and afterwards she looked for him regularly. “Who was it for?” she asked, with an ardent feminine appreciation of the only motive which could induce a man to hurry over his dinner and get to the Vernonry in time for the humble community’s tea. This was a question not very hard to answer, seeing that the next moment she added to herself, “Who else could it be?” It could not be Matilda, or Martha, who were neither young nor fair. It was very unlikely to be Mrs. Reginald, though she was young enough, and not without beauty. “But Harry is not the man to burden himself with a lot of children,” said Catherine, with an unnecessary scoff at the poor fellow who was not her favourite. Thus there was only one person whom it could be. It gave her a sort of pang of amusement when she concluded upon this—Hester! that proud, troublesome creature—she who would never give in, who put on the airs of a princess in the Grange drawing-room, and declined to go to supper—she with the spirit of a revolutionary, and the temper of a—demon—(no, no, this was perhaps too bad—the temper of
