Understanding well that Florence had had some hand in the change of Houston's fortunes, he hesitated upon the point of asking her to tell him all about it. They had been very candid in the past. He recalled their walk by the river and the conversation of that afternoon bearing upon Jack's misdeeds. But, for some reason that he could not, for his dulness, fathom now, he did hesitate. Houston had never told him what was the precise relation between him and Florence, and for him now, he thought, in the event of a secret engagement, perhaps, to seek to learn from her what that relation might be—— It was too delicate, he concluded, altogether too delicate.
"I do hope," she said, "you won't let him get sick working so hard."
"Oh, you needn't worry," he replied, significantly, "I don't think there's any immediate danger."
After a moment she said, bluntly: "You haven't any real faith in him, even now, have you, Jim?"
He was a little startled by her question. Had she, he asked himself, been sitting there reading his mind as though it were a show bill, printed in large type? He felt, for the moment, decidedly uncomfortable.
"You haven't, have you?" she repeated.
"Why, yes," he replied, somewhat indefinitely. "Why yes I have, too."
She shook her yellow head and smiled. "I'm afraid not," she said quietly.
And that instant Crowley came nearer achieving a complete understanding of Houston's case than he was destined to again—until long after. He was glad to leave the little round room at the end of half an hour.
For months Jack and Florence had made plans for the Junior Hop of his third year, but the first of February came and with it a realization to Florence that her hopes were destined to be shattered. Jack explained to her, as best he could, that the three days' respite from work after the first-semester examinations could not be that for him.