Page:The Wheel of Time, Collaboration, Owen Wingrave (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1893).djvu/80

72 who, by the mother's account, had shown an admirable capacity for business. The late Mr. Tregent had also been actively political, and it was fondly hoped, in Manchester Square at least, that the day was not distant when his heir would, in turn, and as a representative of the same respectabilities, speak reported words in debate. Maurice himself, vague about the House of Commons, had nothing to say against his making a figure there. Accordingly, if these natural gifts continued to remind him of his own fastidiously clever youth, it was with the difference that Arthur Tregent's cleverness struck him as much the greater of the two. If the changes in England were marked, this indeed was in general one of them, that the sharp young men were still sharper than of yore. When they had ability, at any rate they showed it all; Maurice would never have pretended that he had shown all his. He had not cared whether any one knew it. It was not how ever this superior intensity which provoked him, and poor young Tregent could not be held responsible for his irritation. If the