As the young man spoke Horace Wilton's memory flew back to the time when a small delicate boy of ten was committed to his care by one of the masters:—
"Wilton, I wish you would look after this little chap; he is evidently a nervous, timid child, and much to be pitied. He has never known a mother's care, and his father died about three years ago. I fear he has been harshly treated and neglected at the house of his maternal grandfather, who has never forgiven his daughter for marrying against his wishes."
The youth of seventeen had glanced at the fair, delicate child, who looked up at him with awe, not unmixed with alarm, and in his heart he formed a resolve that the boy thus placed in his care should be protected from the overbearing oppression to which a fag at a public school was in those days so frequently subjected.
Perhaps the rougher discipline might have tended to harden and strengthen the character of Reginald Fraser, and yet the cold neglect and harsh treatment he received in the house where his mother had once been the only and cherished daughter had increased the natural timidity of the boy. The highly nervous temperament which he inherited from his mother had developed into mental weakness and painful reserve, which even the experiences of a public school could not eradicate.
Some such reflections as these passed through the memory of Horace Wilton, and caused him to pause ere he replied—
"I do not forget old days, Reginald, and I am glad we have had this opportunity of talking over matters, but you must learn to rely upon a higher strength than your own if you wish to gain the power of bearing earthly disappointments with patience and submission."
Reginald Fraser, in his dread of meeting Mary Armstrong, or any one who knew her, evinced a nervous anxiety to leave Oxford by an early train the next day, but this very anxiety defeated his purpose.
It was increased by a letter from Henry Halford, which Horace on that morning had received, stating that he hoped to reach Oxford by the train which arrived there at 2.15.
Reginald had put off so many little matters to this last morning that he failed to be in time for the 12.30 express, and there was no other alternative than for him to remain with the new arrival till the evening, or leave by the 2.25. He chose the latter.
A desire, for which he could not at first account, that the young men should remain strangers to each other haunted Horace Wilton on that Saturday morning.