icacy to repress it, is
to suffer martyrdom at the pleasure of every robust assailant, and in
the end be driven to the refuge of a moody solitude. That encounter
with his objectionable uncle after the prize distribution at Whitelaw
showed how much Godwin had lost of the natural vigour which declared
itself at Andrew Peak's second visit to Twybridge, when the boy
certainly would not have endured his uncle's presence but for
hospitable considerations and the respect due to his mother. The
decision with which he then unbosomed himself to Oliver, still
characterised his thoughts, but he had not courage to elude the
dialogue forced upon him, still less to make known his resentment of
the man's offensive vulgarity. He endured in silence, his heart afire
with scornful wrath.

The affliction could not have befallen him at a time when he was less
capable of supporting it resignedly. Notwithstanding his noteworthy
success in two classes, it seemed to him that he had lost
everything--that the day was one of signal and disgraceful defeat. In
any case that sequence of second prizes must have filled him with
chagrin, but to be beaten thus repeatedly by such a fellow as Bruno
Chilvers was humiliation intolerable. A fopling, a mincer of effeminate
English, a rote-repeater of academic catchwords--bah! The
by-examinations of the year had whispered presage, but Peak always felt
that he was not putting forth his strength; when the serious trial came
he would show what was really in him. Too late he recognised his error,
though he tried not to admit it. The extra subjects had exacted too
much of him; there was a limit to his powers. Within the College this
would be well enough understood, but to explain a disagreeable fact is
not to change it; his name was written in pitiful subordination. And as
for the public assembly--he would have sacrificed some years of his
life to have stepped forward in facile supremacy, beneath the eyes of
those clustered ladies. Instead of that, they had looked upon his
shame; they had interchanged glances of amusement at each repetition of
his defeat; had murmured comments in their melodious speech; had ended
by losing all interest in him--as intuition apprised him was the wont
of women.

As soon as he had escaped from his uncle, he relapsed into musing upon
the position to which he was condemned when the new session came round.
Again Chilvers would be in the same classes with him, and, as likely as
not, with