Lucius was out and about again, not much the worse for his late encounter, by the time Tuesday came round, when he was to lunch with his cousin. He was in fairly good spirits as he walked down the King's Parade and Silver Street, towards the ancient pile of Queens' College. He and his father were better friends than they had been any time since Mr. Binney had come into residence at Cambridge. Mr. Binney now comported himself with the dignity that befitted his years, and no longer made his son's life a burden to him by those continued indiscretions which had brought shame and confusion of face to Lucius in the past. He had restored his full allowance, and Lucius was better off in pocket than he had been since Mr. Binney had come up. And then the Newnham girl, to whom somehow he seemed to be getting nearer, now that he had discovered that she and his cousin were fellow-students, had distinctly given him a glance of recognition when he had seen her in King's Chapel on the previous Sunday. It was not much to pride himself on, certainly, but such as it was he had hugged the thought of it ever since. She had been sitting with some other girls in the front row of seats as Lucius walked up the chapel, and he had taken particular notice of those other girls when he had manoeuvred himself into a seat opposite her, in case one of them should turn out to be his cousin.
John Jermyn kept in a charming set of oak-panelled rooms over-looking the river.
There was an elderly lady sitting in the window seat as Lucius entered, who rose to greet him. She was tall and graceful, with a sweet face and grey hair.
"You are very like your dear mother," she said, her eyes growing a little moist as she looked at him. "We used to be great friends in days gone by, but that is twenty years ago now."
Lucius sat and talked to her in the window seat, while John Jermyn wandered about the room with his hands in his pockets casting impatient glances at the clock on the mantelpiece and the lunch on the table. "Betty is late," he said. "I told her half-past one, and it is getting on for a quarter to two."
"We had better not wait any longer," said Mrs. Jermyn, rising. But just then light steps were heard on the staircase, the door opened, and disclosed to Lucius's astonished gaze the form and features of the Newnham girl.
Miss Betty Jermyn came forward, rosy and a little out of breath, with murmured apologies, kissed her mother and her brother, and then waited with a deepening blush and a mischievous light in her eyes, to be introduced to Lucius, for whom the low dark room seemed suddenly to have become filled with brilliant sunshine.
"This is jour cousin Lucius, Betty," said Mrs. Jermyn, and the two shook hands, but found no words with which to address one another.
In the course of luncheon it came out in the most natural way that Betty and Lucius had attended the same lecture in Trinity College all last term, and remembered one another perfectly.
"But you must have known who I was," said Lucius, a sudden light breaking in on him, as he remembered those little glances of amusement which had so thrilled his soul last term. "Gandey always used to read out our names after the lecture."