'If this had been in my day,' he said, 'some wit would have produced a neat epigram on Phoebus playing his old tricks out of jealousy of Will's verses; but dainty feats of scholarship are gone out of date. Well, Patroclus, when we have you back again, I think we shall none of us mourn over the effects of your generous action.'

Wilmet was near enough to hear, and colour. She had imagined the last night's conversation unknown to all; but Underwood reticence was so incapable of guessing at Harewood communicativeness, that it never entered her brain to suspect the topic of conversation between the three juniors as they walked up the drowsy street.

Thanks to the difficulties of getting under weigh from the Harewood house, there was barely time for John and Lance to take their places, while Mr. Harewood got their tickets, and they were whirled off, leaving the others to promenade the platform, just then a complete solitude.

Mr. Harewood, with the attention of the old school, backed by something warmer, gave Wilmet his arm. He and his son John never seemed to belong to so ramshackle a household as the rest, and he was so gentle and fatherly, that when Wilmet found him aware of all, it was a relief to tell her objections without being answered by a lover. After all, she could only repeat that leaving home was so impossible for her, that, as she murmured, 'He had better not get to like me any more, it would be such a pity for him.'

'That,' said Mr. Harewood, with his air of old-fashioned gallantry, 'depends on the esteem in which wealth or merit is held.'

'And station,' said Wilmet, in an undertone.

'For that, my dear, one would be a fool not to honour you and your brother; besides, it may make you more at ease to hear that my father was an apparitor, and I went to Oxford as a servitor, so that in birth you have the advantage of us. Of course, I do not mean that every one does not in the abstract prefer prosperous matches; but John has a fair independent competence, and can afford to do as he pleases; and, for my part, I should be very sorry if this were not what he pleased.'

'You are so very kind, but surely if—even if—it must be such long waiting, and you would not like that for him.'

'Let us arrive at the if before we settle about the waiting,' said Mr. Harewood. 'In truth, I have long looked on John as so much the most sensible person in my house, that all I feel called on to do is to hope for his success. I know both you and he will be wise enough not to be either selfish or unselfish in the wrong place.'

Wilmet did not quite understand, but she carried away the conviction that she need have no scruple as to the parents' cordial approbation; and she had had her cure from yesterday's sense of want of individual affection. As to the future? Of course it swelled her heart to think of such love and generous kindness; but she tried to believe that she was as much touched by the goodness of the father as by that of the son, and she would be on her guard against herself unless she saw some reasonable hope that home would ever dispense with her. Dear Wilmet; would she not at any other time have thought it an outrage to think of such a possibility? At any rate, she thought, nobody but Felix need ever know.