"I do not know," he informed her briefly.
"Oh, you do not know," she repeated in her low voice. Something in the falling inflection caused her guide to wriggle uneasily.
"Nobody knows," he added, rashly. "I should think nobody would want to, it is so hideous."
"To be sure," she said. "And sophomores live there. Are you perhaps a sophomore, Mr. Tony?"
"I?" Antony exclaimed; then in level tones, "I am a senior."
"Really!" she murmured. "I suppose that means that you are one of the older pupils, then? In the first class?"
"It does," he assented grimly, adding as a cutting afterthought, "a sophomore, I suppose, would be beneath your notice?"
She smiled sweetly. "Oh, dear me, no!" she assurred him, "not in the least--it is all the same to me, you see, Mr. Tony!"
Antony should have realised by this time the folly of any further tilting, but he did not.
"Your interest naturally turns, then, to men of my uncle's age?" he inquired caustically. 16