“Yes—really, didn’t you know it? You did it so well that Grayson said, you couldn’t have done the paper better if you had seen it beforehand.”
“I say, Kennedy, you must have come out swell, then,” said D’Acres, “for Grayson said just the same thing to me.”
“How very odd,” said Brogten, affectedly. “You didn’t see the papers beforehand, Kennedy—did you?”
The last few moments had been torture to Kennedy; he had moved uneasily; the bright look of gratified triumph, which the allusions to his courage had called forth, had gone out the moment the examination was mentioned, and it was only by a painful and violent exercise of the will that he was able to keep back the blood which had begun to rush towards his cheeks. In the endeavour to check or suppress the blush, he had grown ashy pale; but now that Brogten’s dark and cruel eye was upon him—now that the protruding underlip curled with a sneer that left no more room to doubt that he was master of Kennedy’s guilty secret—the effort was useless, and spite of will, the burning crimson of an uncontrollable shame burst and flashed over Kennedy’s usually clear and open face. It was no ordinary blush—no common passage of colour over the cheeks. Over face, and neck, and brow the guilty blood seemed to be crowding tumultuously, and when it had filled every vein and fibre till it swelled, then the rich scarlet seemed to linger there as though it would never die away again, and if for an instant it began to fade, then the hidden thought sent new waves of hot agony in fresh pulses to supply its place. And all the while the conscious victim made matters worse by his attempts to seem unconcerned, until his forehead was wet with heavy perspiration. By that time the men had turned to other topics, and were talking about Bruce’s laziness, and the utter manner in which he must have fallen off for his name to appear, as it had done, in the second class; and, in course of time, Kennedy’s face was as pale and cold as it before had burned and glowed.
And all this while, though he would not look—though he looked at his plate, and at the busts over his head, and the long portraits of Saint Werner’s worthies on the walls, and on this side and on that—Kennedy knew full well that Brogten’s eye had been on him from beginning to end, and that Brogten was enjoying, with devilish malignity, the sense of power which he had gained from the knowledge of another’s sin. The thought was intolerable to him, and, finishing his dinner with hasty gulps, he left the hall.
“Brogten, how rude you were to Kennedy,” said Lillyston.
“Was I?” said Brogten, in a tone of sarcasm and defiance.
“No wonder he blushed at your coarse insinuations.”
“No wonder,” said Brogten, in the same tone; “am I the only person who makes coarse insinuations, as you call them?”
“It is just like you to do so.”