last rebuke; for insolence to a servant; remembered her last embrace,
her last words; and his heart turned tenderly to his father. Yet when he
entered the house and faced the old surroundings, an unexpected gloom
overclouded him. Had he been heart-free and humble, they would have been
full of delight for him; but pride had been busy in his soul. Its home
was in higher planes! How many essential refinements, as he foolishly
and vulgarly counted them, were lacking here! What would Lady Lufa think
of his _entourage_? Did it well become one of the second aristocracy? He
had been gradually filling with a sense of importance--which had no
being except in his own brain; and the notion took the meanest of mean
forms--that of looking down on his own history. He was too much of a
gentleman still not to repress the show of the feeling, but its mere
presence caused a sense of alienation between him and his. When the
first greetings were over, nothing came readily to follow. The wave had
broken on the shore, and there was not another behind it. Things did
not, however, go badly; for the father when disappointed always tried to
account for everything to the advantage of the other; and on his part,
Walter did his best to respond to his father's love-courtesy. He was not
of such as keep no rule over themselves; not willingly would he allow
discomfort to wake temper; he did not brood over defect in those he
loved; but it did comfort him that he was so soon to leave his
_uncongenial_ surroundings, and go where all would be as a gentleman
desired to see it. No one needs find it hard to believe such
snobbishness in a youth gifted like Walter Colman; for a sweet temper,
fine sympathies, warmth of affection, can not be called a man's own, so
long as he has felt and acted without co-operation of the will; and
Walter had never yet fought a battle within himself. He had never set
his will against his inclination. He had, indeed, bravely fronted the
necessity of the world, but we can not regard it as _assurance_ of a
noble nature that one is ready to labor for the things that are needful.