His sympathies were not broad and general enough to comprehend it.

He did not know how quickly all people feel an atmosphere of withdrawal, an air of indifference.

If Stephen had been rich and powerful, the world would have forgiven him these traits, or have smothered its dislike of them; but in a poor man, and an obscure one, such "airs" were not to be tolerated.

Nobody would live in the "wing." And so it came to pass that one day Stephen wrote to Mercy the following letter:-- "You will be sorry to hear that I have had to foreclose the mortgage on this house.

It was impossible to get a tenant for the other half of it, and there was nothing else to be done.