“Is it? Oh well, I shall have to make some more, perhaps, before I have done.”
“Well, you’d better look out what you say to Kennedy, at any rate. He is a fiery subject.”
“Thank you, I will.”
This wrangling was very unprofitable, and Lillyston gladly dropped it, not however without feeling somewhat puzzled at the air which Brogten assumed.
That night Kennedy was sitting miserably in his room alone; he had refused all invitations, and had asked nobody to take tea with him. He was just making tea for himself, when Brogten came to see him.
“May I stay to tea?” he asked, in mock humility.
“If you like,” said Kennedy.
He stayed to tea, and talked about all kinds of subjects rather than the one which was prominent in the thoughts of both. He told Kennedy old Harton stories, and asked him about Marlby; he turned the subject to Home, and really interested Kennedy by telling him what kind of a boy Julian had been, and what inseparable friends he had always been with Lillyston, and how admirably he had recited on speech-day, and how stainless his whole life had been, and how vice and temptation seemed to skulk away at his very look.
“You are reconciled to him, then,” said Kennedy in surprise.
“Oh, yes. At heart, I always respected him. He wasn’t a fellow to take the worst view of one’s character, you know, or to make nasty innuendoes—” He stopped, and eyed Kennedy as a parrot eyes a finger put into his cage, which he could peck if he would. “He wasn’t, you know, a kind of fellow who would force you to leave the table by sneering at you in hall—” He still continued to eye Kennedy, but in vain, for Kennedy kept his moody glance on the table and was silent, and would not look at him or speak to him. Brogten could not help being struck with his appearance as he sat there motionless,—the noble and perfectly formed head, the well-cut features, the cheek a little pale now, so boyishly smooth and round, the latent powers of fire and sarcasm and strength in the bright eye and beautiful lip. It was a base source of triumph that made Brogten exult in the knowledge that this youth was in his power; that he held for a time at least the strings of his happiness or misery; that at any time by a word in any public place he could bring on his fine features that hue of shame; that for his own purposes he could at any time ruin his reputation, and put an end to his popularity.