Trevelyan, who was a year younger than Stanbury, had taken upon himself to be very angry.  He professed that he did not think much of the trade of a journalist, and told Stanbury that he was sinking from the highest to almost the lowest business by which an educated man and a gentleman could earn his bread.  Stanbury had simply replied that he saw some bread on the one side, but none on the other; and that bread from some side was indispensable to him.  Then there had come to be that famous war between Great Britain and the republic of Patagonia, and Hugh Stanbury had been sent out as a special correspondent by the editor and proprietor of the Daily Record.  His letters had been much read, and had called up a great deal of newspaper pugnacity.  He had made important statements which had been flatly denied, and found to be utterly false; which again had been warmly reasserted and proved to be most remarkably true to the letter.  In this way the correspondence, and he as its author, became so much talked about that, on his return to England, he did actually sell his gown and, wig and declare to his friends and to Trevelyan among the number that he intended to look to journalism for his future career.

He had been often at the house in Curzon Street in the earliest happy days of his friend’s marriage, and had thus become acquainted—­intimately acquainted—­with Nora Rowley.  And now again, since his return from Patagonia, that acquaintance had been renewed.  Quite lately, since the actual sale of that wig and gown had been effected, he had not been there so frequently as before, because Trevelyan had expressed his indignation almost too openly.

‘That such a man as you should be so faint-hearted,’ Trevelyan had said, ‘is a thing that I can not understand.’

’Is a man faint-hearted when he finds it improbable that he shall be able to leap his horse over a house.’

‘What you had to do, had been done by hundreds before you.’

‘What I had to do has never yet been done by any man,’ replied Stanbury.  ’I had to live upon nothing till the lucky hour should strike.’

‘I think you have been cowardly,’ said Trevelyan.

Even this had made no quarrel between the two men; but Stanbury had expressed himself annoyed by his friend’s language, and partly on that account, and partly perhaps on another, had stayed away from Curzon Street.  As Nora Rowley had made comparisons about him, so had he made comparisons about her.  He had owned to himself that had it been possible that he should marry, he would willingly entrust his happiness to Miss Rowley.  And he had thought once or twice that Trevelyan had wished that such an arrangement might be made at some future day.  Trevelyan had always been much more sanguine in expecting success for his friend at the Bar than Stanbury had been for himself.  It might well be that such a man as Trevelyan might think that a clever rising barrister would be