What was the use of living exactly as you liked, _if you did not like it ?_ Oh, Michael! Michael! Michael! He forgot that he had often been nearly as miserable as this when Michael had been free and happy.

Not quite, but nearly.

Now he attributed the whole of his recurrent wretchedness, which was largely temperamental, to his distress about his brother's fate.
That wound, never healed, bled afresh.

Who felt for him in his trouble?
Who, among all his friends, cared, or understood?
No one.

That was the way of the world.
Fay's sweet, forlorn face, snowdrop pale under its long black veil, rose suddenly before him, as he had seen it some weeks ago, when he had met her walking in the woods near her father's house.