The first of these courses might perhaps have
been the wisest; but the other was most congenial
to the blunt and plain character of Hartley, who
saw neither propriety nor comfort in maintaining a
show of friendly intercourse, to conceal hate, contempt,
and mutual dislike.
The circle at Fort Saint George was much more
restricted at that time than it has been since. The
coldness of the young men did not escape notice;
it transpired that they had been once intimates and
fellow-students; yet it was now found that they
hesitated at accepting invitations to the same parties.
Rumour assigned many different and incompatible
reasons for this deadly breach, to which
Hartley gave no attention whatever, while Lieutenant
Middlemas took care to countenance those
which represented the cause of the quarrel most
favourably to himself.
``A little bit of rivalry had taken place,'' he said,
when pressed by gentlemen for an explanation;
``he had only had the good luck to get further in
the good graces of a fair lady than his friend Hartley,
who had made a quarrel of it, as they saw.
He thought it very silly to keep up spleen, at such
a distance of time and space. He was sorry, more
for the sake of the strangeness of the appearance
of the thing than any thing else, although his friend
had really some very good points about him.
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