He had never overcome his unwarrantable dislike of Harold, whom he considered far beneath him; but Harold was too popular to be openly treated with contempt, and so there was a show of friendship and civility between them, without any real liking on either side.

Tom could not tell just when he began to look upon Jerrie as the loveliest girl he had ever seen, and to contemplate the feasibility of making her Mrs.Tom Tracy.

His admiration for her had been of slow growth, for she was worse than a nobody--a child of the Tramp House, of whose antecedents nothing was known, while he was a Tracy, of Tracy Park, whom a duchess might be proud to wed.

But he had succumbed at last to Jerrie's beauty, and sprightliness, and originality, and now his love for her had become the absorbing passion of his life, and he would have made her his wife at any moment, in the face of all his mother's opposition.

By some subtle intuition, he felt that Harold was his rival, though he could not fathom the nature of Harold's feeling for Jerrie, so carefully did the latter conceal it.
'He must regard her as something more than a sister,' he thought; 'he cannot see her every day without loving her, and by-and-by he will tell her so, and then my cake is dough.