Thus, beneath the younger son's caressing gentleness, there grew up a
certain regard for self; it was latent, it took amiable colours; it had
even a certain charm and grace in so sweet a child, but selfishness it
was not the less. In this he differed from his brother. Philip was
self-willed: Sidney self-loving. A certain timidity of character,
endearing perhaps to the anxious heart of a mother, made this fault in
the younger boy more likely to take root. For, in bold natures, there is
a lavish and uncalculating recklessness which scorns self unconsciously
and though there is a fear which arises from a loving heart, and is but
sympathy for others--the fear which belongs to a timid character is but
egotism--but, when physical, the regard for one's own person: when moral,
the anxiety for one's own interests.

It was in a small room in a lodging-house in the suburb of H---- that
Mrs. Morton was seated by the window, nervously awaiting the knock of the
postman, who was expected to bring her brother's reply to her letter. It
was therefore between ten and eleven o'clock--a morning in the merry
month of June. It was hot and sultry, which is rare in an English June.
A flytrap, red, white, and yellow, suspended from the ceiling, swarmed
with flies; flies were on the ceiling, flies buzzed at the windows; the
sofa and chairs of horsehair seemed stuffed with flies. There was an
air of heated discomfort in the thick, solid moreen curtains, in the
gaudy paper, in the bright-staring carpet, in the very looking-glass over
the chimney-piece, where a strip of mirror lay imprisoned in an embrace
of frame covered with yellow muslin. We may talk of the dreariness of
winter; and winter, no doubt, is desolate: but what in the world is more
dreary to eyes inured to the verdure and bloom of Nature--,

"The pomp of groves and garniture of fields,"