The sweetness and harmony of the time, however, were soon to be disturbed. After a few weeks of happiness, Gabriel Carew began to be troubled. In his heart he had no love for the twin brothers, Eric and Emilius; he believed them to be light-minded and unscrupulous, nay, more, he believed them to be treacherous in their dealings with both men and women. These evil qualities, he had decided with himself, they had inherited from their father, Silvain, whose conduct towards his unhappy brother Kristel had excited Gabriel Carew's strong abhorrence. As is shown in the comments he makes in his record, all his sympathy was with Kristel, and he had contracted a passionate antipathy against Silvain, whom he believed to be guilty of the blackest treachery in his dealings with Avicia. This antipathy he now transferred to Silvain's sons, Eric and Emilius, and they needed to be angels, not men, to overcome it.
Not that they tried to win Carew's good opinion. Although his feelings for them were not openly expressed, they made themselves felt in the consciousness of these twin brothers, who instinctively recognised that Gabriel Carew was their enemy. Therefore they held off from him, and repaid him quietly in kind. But this was a matter solely and entirely between themselves and known only to themselves. The three men knew what deep pain and grief it would cause not only Doctor Louis and his wife, but the gentle Lauretta, to learn that they were in enmity with each other, and one and all were animated by the same desire to keep this antagonism from the knowledge of the family. This was, indeed, a tacit understanding between them, and it was so thoroughly carried out that no member of Doctor Louis's family suspected it; and neither was it suspected in the village. To all outward appearance Gabriel Carew and Eric and Emilius were friends.
It was not the brothers but Carew who, in the first instance, was to blame. He was the originator and the creator of the trouble, for it is scarcely to be doubted that had he held out the hand of a frank friendship to them, they would have accepted it, even though their acceptance needed some sacrifice on their parts. The reason for this qualification will be apparent to you later on in the story, and you will then also understand why I do not reveal certain circumstances respecting the affection of Eric and Emilius for Martin Hartog's daughter, Patricia, and for the female members of the family of Doctor Louis. It would be anticipating events. I am relating the story in the order in which it progressed, and, so far as my knowledge of it goes, according to the sequence of time.