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Mr. Scarborough's Family by Anthony Trollope
page 88 of 751 (11%)
the first in rank; and to him Florence Mountjoy had been allotted as a
bride. How he had himself learned first to envy and then to covet this
allotted bride need not here be told. But by degrees it had come to pass
that Augustus had determined that his spendthrift brother should fall
under his own power, and that the bride should be the reward. How it was
that two brothers, so different in character, and yet so alike in their
selfishness, should have come to love the same girl with a true
intensity of purpose, and that Harry Annesley, whose character was
essentially different, and who was in no degree selfish, should have
loved her also, must be left to explain itself as the girl's character
shall be developed. But Florence Mountjoy had now for many months been
the cause of bitter dislike against poor Harry in the mind of Augustus
Scarborough. He understood much more clearly than his brother had done
who it was that the girl really preferred. He was ever conscious, too,
of his own superiority,--falsely conscious,--and did feel that if Harry's
character were really known, no girl would in truth prefer him. He
could not quite see Harry with Florence's eyes nor could he see himself
with any other eyes but his own.

Then had come the meeting between Mountjoy and Harry Annesley in the
street, of which he had only such garbled account as Mountjoy himself
had given him within half an hour afterward. From that story, told in
the words of a drunken man,--a man drunk, and bruised, and bloody, who
clearly did not understand in one minute the words spoken in the
last,--Augustus did learn that there had been some great row between his
brother and Harry Annesley. Then Mountjoy had disappeared,--had
disappeared, as the reader will have understood, with his brother's
co-operation,--and Harry had not come forward, when inquiries were made,
to declare what he knew of the occurrences of that night. Augustus had
narrowly watched his conduct, in order at first that he might learn in
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