"George Paradyne: Paradyne's son."
"No! Do you mean that fellow you asked about? It can't be."
"It is. I knew him, I tell you; and I've been looking at the name on the roll. Your memory must be a bad one, Loftus, not to have recognised the face also."
Loftus drew a deep breath, as if unable to take in the full sense of the words. But he never displayed much surprise at anything.
"I don't suppose I saw the fellow three times in my life," he presently said. "We did not live on the spot, as you did; and it is so long ago."
"What's to be done? He can't be allowed to stay here."
Loftus shrugged his shoulders, French fashion, having no answer at hand. "Brabazon is not aware of who he is, I suppose?"
"Impossible; or he'd never have admitted him. One can overlook some things in a fellow's antecedents; but forgery—that's rather too strong. If the rest of the college chose to tolerate him, you and I and Dick could not."
Mr. Loftus threw up his condemning nose at the latter addition. Dick, indeed! Dick seemed to be going in for something too bad on his own score, to be fastidious as to the society he kept.
"What's the matter?" inquired one of the first-class boys, Irby, coming up to them from the middle of the quadrangle, and leaning his arms on the cloister wall, to talk face to face.