Not that he intended to do so. He had the power, but unless provoked, he did not wish or mean to use it. It was far more luxurious to keep it to himself, and use it as occasion might serve. Everybody’s secret is nobody’s secret, and it was enough for Brogten to enjoy privately the triumph he had longed for, and which accident had put into his hands.
“Come, come, Kennedy,” he said, “this is nonsense; we understand each other. I saw you coolly read over the whole examination-paper, you know, which wasn’t the most honourable thing in the world to do—”
He paused and half relented as he saw a solitary tear on Kennedy’s cheek, which was indignantly brushed away almost as soon as it had started.
“Come,” he said, “cheer up, man. I’m not going to tell of you; neither Grayson nor any of the men shall know it, and at present not a soul has a suspicion of such a thing except ourselves. Come—I’ve had my triumph over you, for your sharp words in hall last term, before all the men, and that’s all I wanted. Don’t let’s be enemies any longer. Good-night.”
But Kennedy sat there passively, and when Brogten had gone away whistling “The Rat-catcher’s Daughter,” he leant his head upon his hand, and his thoughts wandered away to Violet Home.
O holy, ennobling, purifying love! He felt that if he had known Violet before, he should not now have been in Brogten’s power. He fancied that the secret had oozed out; he fancied that men eyed him sometimes with strange glances; he pictured to himself the degradation he should feel if Julian, or De Vayne, or Lillyston ever knew of what weakness he was capable. This one error rode like a night-mare on his breast.
But none of his gloomy presentiments on the score of detection were fulfilled. Except to Bruce, and that under pledge of secrecy, Brogten never betrayed what he knew, and the only immediate way in which he exercised the influence which his knowledge gave him, was by claiming with Kennedy a tone of familiarity, and asking him to card parties, suppers, and idle riots of all kinds, in which Bruce and Fitzurse were frequent visitors.