He did not accompany her with a very good grace, and there was a heavy frown upon his face, which betrayed that he was greatly irritated over his failure to extort Clifford’s secret from him. The professor stood gravely regarding our hero for a moment, as if he also would have been glad to learn more, and was not quite pleased over his reticence; then he excused himself and went away; but both young men could see that the recent occurrence had left an unpleasant impression on his mind.
It certainly had been a very awkward interview, and the evidence was rather against Clifford, for he had been proven ignorant of a most interesting secret connected with the ring which he claimed as his own.
“Well!” he observed, glancing at his friend, “this has been a queer experience.”
“I should say so indeed!” Rogers exclaimed, with an expression of disgust, “but Wentworth is a purse-proud cad anyway, and if his mother and the professor had not been here I should have been tempted to knock him down for his insolence. You held yourself well in hand, Faxon, and I admire you for it.”
CHAPTER VIII.
AN INSOLENT DEMAND.
In spite of the court of inquiry and the mortification to which he had been subjected, Clifford was by no means crushed, in view of his recent encounter with Philip Wentworth, who, he had long been conscious, had been nursing a grudge against him ever since the day of their first meeting. On the whole, when he came to think the matter over by himself, he was secretly pleased with the outcome of it, for he had at least learned the secret of his precious ring and the initials of the fair unknown who had been its donor.—“M. N. H.” He wondered what they stood for.
Mrs. Temple and Wentworth had both familiarly spoken of her as “Mollie,” but he would have given a great deal to have learned her full name; yet he was too proud to ask it, or to acknowledge to them that he was in ignorance of it.
“Mollie!” he found himself repeating over and over, until the homely name rang like sweetest music in his heart.
The ring was a thousand times more precious to him now than it had ever been, with its hidden legend which would hereafter possess as great a significance to him, almost as much as that of the fetish of the African devotee.