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His brother and sister received him warmly. Charles had always been sorry for Gervase, who he felt had suffered through his eccentricity and had never had a fair deal from life. It was difficult to say exactly where the difference between him and his brother lay. They had both grown to adolescence through the alarms and disruptions of the Civil War, they had both spent a racketing, penniless youth in France, they had both returned to England and re-established themselves in ways that had grown foreign to them from disuse. But Charles had fitted himself smoothly into these changes and had been mainly happy in them, while Gervase had been twisted into a suffering shape. It was not merely the difference between the Manor and the Parsonage, between the lots of the elder and the younger son, nor even the difference between Louise d'Aurey and Mary Ann Pye . . . it was a difference of fibre: Charles knew that Gervase was the stronger fibre—strong, but not strong enough; always struggling and resisting and finally warped.