ic
of Patagonia, and Hugh Stanbury had been sent out as a special
correspondent by the editor and proprietor of the Daily Record.
His letters had been much read, and had called up a great deal of
newspaper pugnacity. He had made important statements which had been
flatly denied, and found to be utterly false; which again had been
warmly reasserted and proved to be most remarkably true to the
letter. In this way the correspondence, and he as its author, became
so much talked about that, on his return to England, he did actually
sell his gown and wig and declare to his friends,--and to Trevelyan
among the number,--that he intended to look to journalism for his
future career.

He had been often at the house in Curzon Street in the earliest
happy days of his friend's marriage, and had thus become
acquainted,--intimately acquainted,--with Nora Rowley. And now again,
since his return from Patagonia, that acquaintance had been renewed.
Quite lately, since the actual sale of that wig and gown had been
effected, he had not been there so frequently as before, because
Trevelyan had expressed his indignation almost too openly.

"That such a man as you should be so faint-hearted," Trevelyan had
said, "is a thing that I can not understand."

"Is a man faint-hearted when he finds it improbable that he shall be
able to leap his horse over a house?"

"What you had to do had been done by hundreds before you."

"What I had to do has never yet been done by any man," replied
Stanbury. "I had to live upon nothing till the lucky hour should
strike."

"I think you have been cowardly," said Trevelyan.

Even this had made no quarrel between the two men; but Stanbury had
expressed himself annoyed by his friend's language, and partly on
that account, and partly perhaps on another, had stayed away from
Curzon Street. As Nora Rowley had made comparisons about him, so had
he made comparisons about her. He had owned to himself that had it
been possible that he should marry, he would willingly entrust his
happiness to Miss Rowley. And he had thought once or twice that
Trevelyan had wished that such an arrangement might be made at some
future day. Trevelyan had always been much more sanguine in expecting
success for his friend at the Bar, than Stanbury had been for
himself. It might well be that such a man as Trevelyan might think
that a clever rising barrister would be an excellent husband for his
sister-in-law, but that a man earning a preca