"You think perhaps—he has not given in," Roland said.
Harry gave him a bewildered look, half grateful, half angry. "Now I wonder what I've said that has made you think that!"
"Nothing that you have said—perhaps only an uneasy feeling in my own mind that it isn't natural, and that I don't understand it any more than you."
"Well," said Harry, with a long breath of relief, "that is just what I think. I don't believe for a moment, you understand, that Ned, who is a real good fellow all through"—here he made a slight pause, and glanced at Roland with a sort of defiance, as if expecting a doubt, which however was not expressed—"means anything underhand, you know. Of course I don't mean that. But when a man knows that he is cleverer than another fellow, he'll just shut up sometimes and take his own way, feeling it's no use to argue—I don't mean he thinks himself cleverer than you, Ashton; that's a different affair. But he hasn't much opinion of me. And in most things no doubt he's right, and I've never set up to have much of an opinion."
"There you are wrong, Vernon," said Roland, "you have the better judgment of the two. Edward may be cleverer as you say, but I'd rather throw in my lot with you."
"Do you really say so?" cried Harry, lighting up; "well, that is very kind of you anyhow. My only principle is we've got others to consider besides ourselves."
"Precisely so," said Roland, who had heard this statement already, "and you were quite right to stick to it: but I confess I am like you, not quite comfortable about the other matter. Has he means enough of his own to go in for it? If so, I should think that was what he intended."
Harry shook his head. "We had none of us any means," he said. "Aunt Catherine took us, as you might say, off the streets. We were not even very near relations. She's done everything for us: that's why I say doubly, don't let us risk a penny of her money or of what she prizes above money. You may think we were not very grateful to her," Harry continued, "but that's only Ellen's way of talking. If there was anything to be done for Aunt Catherine that little thing has got as true a heart as any one. But we were not wanted, as you may say. Ned was always the favourite, and so Nell set up a little in opposition, but never meaning any harm."
"I feel sure of that," said Roland, with a warmer impulse than perhaps Mrs. Ellen in her own person would have moved him to. And then he added, after a pause, "I think I'll open the subject again. If Edward Vernon means to do anything rash, it's better he should be in my hands than in some, perhaps, that might be less scrupulous. I'll see him to-morrow about it. There's no time lost, at least——"