"Ay, he seems that. I like the boy amazingly, so far as I have seen. What about his past history?"
Dr. Brabazon looked full at the German master. Mr. Henry understood the appeal, and found there was no help for it; he must respond. But he had an invincible dislike to speak of the Paradynes and their misfortune. And the doctor was not alone.
"You allude to that unhappy business in Liverpool, sir?"
"I do. I am very sorry the boy has been recognised here. You may speak before my daughter, Mr. Henry,"—for the Doctor saw that he had glanced at Miss Brabazon. "I told her of it to-day; she is quite safe. It seems almost a fatality that the boy should have come to the very place where Trace and the Loftuses were being educated."
"Yes it does," was the sad response: and Dr. Brabazon little thought how bitterly that poor sensitive young German master was reproaching himself, for he had been the means of bringing young Paradyne to Orville College.
"I'd not hesitate to keep the boy a minute, if I were sure—"
"Oh, sir, don't turn him out!" interrupted Mr. Henry, his voice ringing with pain. "To dismiss George Paradyne from the college, now that he has entered it, might prove a serious blight upon him; a blight that might follow him everywhere, for the cause could not fail to be noised abroad. Better let him stay and face it out: he may—it is possible he may—in time—live it down. I beg your pardon, Dr. Brabazon; I ought not to have said so much."
"My good friend,"—and the doctor was a little agitated also,—"you never need urge clemency on me. Heaven knows that we have, most of us, secret cares of our own; and they render us—or ought to—lenient upon others. If I could wipe out with a sponge the past as regards young Paradyne, I'd do it in glad thankfulness. He is to remain; it is so decided; and I hope the past will not ooze out to the school. That is what I fear."
"In himself he is, I think, everything that could be wished," said the usher in a low tone; "a good, honourable, painstaking boy, with the most implicit trust in his late father's innocence."
Dr. Brabazon lifted his eyes. "But there are no possible grounds to hope that he was innocent! Are there?"