“He hasn’t got his fellowship. It’s the second time he’s failed. That means he will never get one. He will never be a don, nor live in Cambridge and that, as we had hoped.”
“Oh, poor, poor fellow!” said Mrs. Elliot with a remorse that was sincere, though her congratulations would not have been. “I am so very sorry.”
But Maud turned to Rickie. “Mr. Elliot, you might know. Tell me. What is wrong with Stewart’s philosophy? What ought he to put in, or to alter, so as to succeed?”
Agnes, who knew better than this, smiled.
“I don’t know,” said Rickie sadly. They were none of them so clever, after all.
“Hegel,” she continued vindictively. “They say he’s read too much Hegel. But they never tell him what to read instead. Their own stuffy books, I suppose. Look here—no, that’s the ‘Windsor.’” After a little groping she produced a copy of “Mind,” and handed it round as if it was a geological specimen. “Inside that there’s a paragraph written about something Stewart’s written about before, and there it says he’s read too much Hegel, and it seems now that that’s been the trouble all along.” Her voice trembled. “I call it most unfair, and the fellowship’s gone to a man who has counted the petals on an anemone.”
Rickie had no inclination to smile.
“I wish Stewart had tried Oxford instead.”
“I don’t wish it!”
“You say that,” she continued hotly, “and then you never come to see him, though you knew you were not to wait for an invitation.”