“She is married already, sir. Did you not know it?”
“Married already! Who says so?”
So I told him all about it—as much as I knew—and that her husband, Mr. Everty, had been to Oxford once or twice to see her.
“Well, that’s a relief,” cried Mr. Brandon, drawing a deep breath, as though a fear of some kind had been lifted from his mind. And then he fell into a reverie, his head nodding incessantly, and his yellow handkerchief in his hand keeping time to it.
“If it’s better in one sense, it’s worse in another,” he squeaked. “Todhetley’s in love with her, I suppose!”
“Something like it, sir,” said Bill.
“What brainless fools some of you young men can be!”
But it was then on the stroke of nine, when Old Tom would peal out. Mr. Brandon hurried us away: he seemed to understand the notions of University life as well as we did: ordering us to say nothing to Tod, as he intended to speak to him on the morrow.
And we concluded that he did. Tod came stalking in during the afternoon in a white rage with somebody, and I thought it might be with old Brandon.
The time passed. Mr Brandon stayed on at the Mitre as though he meant to make it his home for good, and was evidently watching. Tod seemed to be conscious of it, and to exist in a chronic state of irritation. Sophie Chalk stayed on also, and Tod was there more than ever. The affair had got wind somehow—I mean Tod’s infatuation for her—and was talked of in the colleges. Richardson fell ill about that time: at least, he met with an accident which confined him to his bed: and the play at Mrs. Everty’s was not much to speak of: I did not go, Mr. Brandon had interdicted it. Thus the time went on, and Passion Week was coming in.