Between these two irreconcilable conclusions: the one, that what I felt was general and unavoidable; the other, that it was particular to me, and might have been different: I balanced curiously,

"And, in the first place, was that silver ours?" Madame Magloire was speechless. Another silence ensued; then the Bishop went on:— "Madame Magloire, I have for a long time detained that silver wrongfully. It belonged to the poor. Who was that man? A poor man, evidently."

and they sank beneath the unnatural devotion of their youthful energies to their dry old books?

The whole affair was miserably small: his debts were small, even his expectations were not anything so very magnificent. Fred had known men to whom he would have been ashamed of confessing the smallness of his scrapes.