"Nothing, nothing!" Caroline declared quickly.
But on the way home in her carriage Caroline wondered where the Reverend Richard Allen, rector of St. Paul's, had acquired his tin ear.
II
"DEAR SIS—Yours received. Have hunted up the name, and have found that your Reverend Richard Allen is an '89 man, one of the best all-round men we ever had on the track. He was a terror, too, so an old grad tells me. Got kicked out in his senior year. It seems that his chum and roommate was very deeply in the hole, not extravagantly, like yours truly, but by a series of hard knocks. Allen had no cash himself. And you know when you haven't any money in sight, you can't borrow any. One night at the Museum (there was a cheap show on) a prize-fighter offered $300 to any one who would stand up before him for five rounds. Allen jumped up on the stage and licked the pug to a standstill. He got a bad swipe on the ear, however; and if your Allen has what they call a tin ear, an ear that looks as if my best bullpup had tried to make his dinner off it, ecce homo! He paid his mate's debts, and then was requested to call on the fac. The old ladies told him to pack up. He did. He has never returned to college since. But why do you want to know all about him? They say he was a handsome duffer. You know I haven't seen him yet, not having been home since last Easter time. Now, for Heaven's sake, Sis, don't go and get daffy on his Riverince. I've got a man in tow for you, the best fellow that ever lived.
Affectionately, Jack."
"P.S.—Can't you shove a couple of 50's in your next letter to me? The governor's liver wasn't in good shape the first of the month."
Caroline dropped the letter into her lap and stared out of the window. It was snowing great, soft, melting flakes. She did not know whether to laugh or to cry, nor what occasioned this impulse to do either. So he was a Cambridge man, and had been expelled for prize-fighting; for certainly it had been prize-fighting, even though the motive had been a good and manly one.
"A milksop!" There was no doubt, no hesitancy; her laughter rang out fresh and clear. What would her father say when he learned the truth? Her next thought was, why should the rector pose as a lamb, patient and unspeaking, when all the time he was a lion? She alone had solved the mystery. It was self-control, it was power. This discovery filled her with a quiet exultation. She was a woman, and to unravel a secret was as joyful a task for her as to invent a fashionable hat.
The bygone rectors had interested her little; they had been either pedants, fanatics, or social drones; while this man had gone about his work quietly and modestly. He never said: "I visited the poor to-day." It was the poor who said: "The rector was here to-day with money and clothes." But his past he let remain nebulous; not even the trustees themselves had peered far into it, at least not as far back as the Cambridge days. Thus, the element of mystery surrounding him first attracted her; the man's personality added to this. The knowledge that he was a college man seemed to place him nearer her social level, though she was not a person to particularize so long as a man proved himself; and the rector had, beyond a doubt, proved himself.