"And after Chapel."
"Yes, sir."
A moment later Warde came in. Dumbleton went out immediately with a sorrowful, backward glance at John. The good fellow looked terribly bewildered. For John's face, John's deportment, had amazed him. John was quite unaware of it, but he looked astonishingly well. Excitement had flushed his cheek and lent a sparkle to his grey eyes. He had enjoyed his ride to town and back; he had slept soundly under the lee of a haystack; and he had washed his face and hands in the horse-trough at the foot of Sudbury Hill. And the certainty that Desmond was safe, that in the end he, John, had triumphed over Scaife, filled his soul with joy. Warde, on the other hand, looked wretched; he had passed a sleepless night; he was pale, haggard, gaunt.
"What have you to say, Verney?"
"Nothing, sir."
"Nothing." Warde clenched his hands, and burst into speech, letting all that he had suffered and suppressed escape in tumultuous words and gestures. "Nothing. You dare to stand there and say—nothing. That you should have done this thing! Why, it's incredible! And I who trusted you. And you listened to me with a face like brass, laughing in your sleeve, no doubt, at the fool who betrayed himself. And you came here, so my wife tells me, to see if I was out of the way, if the coast was clear. And you were cool as a cucumber. Oh, you hypocrite, you damnable hypocrite! I have to see you now, but never again will I look willingly upon your face, never! Well, this wretched business must be ended. You got out of my house last night. You heard I was dining with the Head Master. I returned early, and I saw you jump from the passage window. You don't deny that you went up to London, I suppose?"
At the moment John, quite unconsciously, looked as if he were glorying in what he had done. Warde could have struck his clean, clear face, unblushingly meeting his furious glance. In disgust, he turned his back and walked to the window. John felt rather than saw that his tutor was profoundly moved. When he turned, two tears were trickling down his cheeks. The sight of them nearly undid John. When Warde spoke again, his voice was choked by his emotion.
"Verney," he said, "I spoke just now in an unrestrained manner, because you—you"—his voice trembled—"have shaken my faith in all I hold most dear. I say to you—I say to you that I believed in you as I believe in my wife. Even now I feel that somehow there is a mistake—that you are not what you confess yourself to be—a brazen-faced humbug. You have worked as I have worked for this House, and in one moment you undo that work. Have you paused to think, what effect this will have upon the others?"
"Not yet, sir."