She was adjusting with slender and deft little fingers, while a sweet, soft, self-satisfied smile rippled over her face, in her lace collarette, a tuft of stephenotis with two buds of a particular kind of rose that Robert knew grew in the conservatory of Craigmhor alone; and his eyes fastened angrily on them at once, though she made no reference to them, or how they came to be there. The presence of the personage he had just passed fully accounted for that; he had doubtless transferred them from his own buttonhole to her hand, and Robert knew quite enough of 'the language of the flowers' to know what two rosebuds, so given, implied. And now her face wore—so Robert thought—just such a smile as that of Faust's Marguerite, when plucking the mystical rose-leaves in her garden.
Robert felt that the gap between them was widening; he did not present his hand, nor did she offer hers, but continued to adjust her little bouquet, while he stood before her with his hands thrust into the pockets of his grey morning-coat, and kicked away a pebble or two that lay in the gravelled walk.
'Ellinor!'
'Well, Robert,' she replied, a little nervously; 'you have come to tell me that you have passed, I suppose?'
'No.'
'Why—what then?'
'Because I have not passed.'
'Not passed!' said Ellinor, looking at him with genuine regret.
'No—on the first of this month the medical degrees were conferred as usual, but not on me—not perhaps that you care much now,' he added, in a thickening voice. 'I shall have to try again—if, indeed, I ever try more.'
'Why, Robert, what has come to you that you talk to me thus? I am most sorry for you indeed.' She looked him earnestly, but Robert thought not honestly, in the face.