"After all, Miss Simpson is only her cousin," he said. "If I routed about I might find some rather shady cousins myself. But then I don't live with them. If her parents were a decided cut above that, how comes she there? And being there, how can she have escaped contamination? I wonder what Miss Simpson's dinner-table is like? Ugh! Is it as squalid as the shop? And why is the shop so squalid? Does Miss Simpson allow no interference in her domain? And yet I cannot conceive of Miss Maclean being out of place at a duchess's table."
He dropped into a chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and spoke aloud almost indignantly in his perplexity.
"How can a provincial shop-girl be a woman of the world? And yet, upon my soul! Miss Maclean seems to me to come nearer Melville's description than any woman I ever knew. Alack-a-day! I must be besotted indeed. Oh, damn that examination!"
Ralph returned to his books, however, and tried hard to shut out all farther thoughts of Mona that night.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
CARBOLIC!
"Holloa, Jones! going home?"
"I am going to lunch; I may be back in the afternoon."
"Please yourself, my dear fellow, but if you don't finish that axilla to-day, I shall be under the painful necessity of reflecting the pectorals, and proceeding with the thorax, at 9 A.M. to-morrow."
"Oh, I say, Dudley, that is too bad."