usual powers, firmly conscious of themselves, inordinately ambitious, but even that in a keen, critical and studiously systematic manner, the Anglo-Venetian thought Erceldoune nothing more than a fine animal physically, and half a fool mentally, underrating what was dissimilar to himself with an error not uncommon with minds of his stamp, when their disdainful egotistic measurement has not been corrected by the experiences of a long life. Yet, widely diverse though they were, and utterly contrasted in every iota, the one who never resisted his passion, and never thought of her save with such chivalrous trust and absolute self-abandonment as were instinctive to his temperament, was scarcely more a prey to it than the other, who, with his love, blended a thousand threads of policy, design, and covetous intrigue, and hated it for having stolen on him, hated it for halting on his lips, hated it for levelling him with the herd he had so contemptuously despised; hated it because, for the first time, he had found a talent stronger, a logic surer, and a perception keener and subtler, and courage more daring and careless than his own; because, in fine, he had found his master, and found it in a woman.
This, a knowledge not easily to be pardoned by
