"He said that his young master Percy never required impossibilities, and though often impatient never abused him. You heard the word, and feeling you had been so, believed he applied it to yourself."
"But in what can he be my superior?" asked Edward, in a low voice, as if still afraid his passion would regain ascendency.
"I will answer your question by another, Edward. Suppose any one had used abusive terms toward you, and contemptuously desired you to get out of their sight, how would you have answered?"
"I would have struck him to the earth," replied Edward, passionately, and quite forgetting his wished for control. "Neither equal nor superior should dare speak so to me again."
"And what prevented Robert acting in the same manner? Do you think he has no feeling?—that he is incapable of such emotions as pain or anger?"
Edward stood for a minute quite still and silent.
"I did not think any thing about it," he said, at length; "but I certainly supposed I had a right to say what I pleased to one so far beneath me."
"And in what is Robert so far beneath you?"
"He is a servant, and I am a gentleman in birth, rank—"
"Stop, Edward! did you make yourself a gentleman? Is it any credit to you, individually, to be higher in the world, and receive a better education than Robert?"