"No, Miss Beauclerc. I am waiting for George Prattleton. He is at Griffin's."
"Miss Beauclerc!" she echoed; "how formal you are to-night. I'd not be as cold as you, Henry Arkell, for the whole world!"
"I, cold!"
He said no more in refutation. If Georgina could but have known his real feelings! If she could but have divined how his pulses were beating, his veins coursing! Perhaps she did.
"Are you better? What a fall you had! And to faint after it!"
"Yes, I think I am better, thank you. It hurt my head a little."
"And you had been annoyed with those rebellious school boys! You are not half strict enough with the choristers. I hope Aultane will get a flogging, as Lewis did for locking you up in St. James's Church. I asked Lewis the next day how he liked it: he was so savage. I think he'd murder you if he could: he's jealous, you know."
She laughed as she spoke the last words, and her gay blue eyes were bent on him; he could discern them even in the dark, obscure corner where the deanery door stood. Henry did not answer: he was in wretched spirits.
"Harry, tell me—why is it you so rarely come to the deanery? Do you think any other college boy would dare to set at nought the dean's invitations—and mine?"
"Remembering what passed between us one night at the deanery—the audit night—can you wonder that I do not oftener come?" he inquired.