"Someone has prejudiced her against me, but who? I did not know that I had an enemy in the world. Someone has told her about—about Oxford—about my being sent down."
Jim is silent.
"If it is only that——" a tearful buoyancy beginning to pierce through his despair.
"It is not that."
"Someone has put a spoke in my wheel; but who? You are the only person who could, and you, dear old chap, are the last person who would, though you were not very encouraging to me last night! You did not?"
There is so direct an interrogation in the last words, accompanied by so confiding a look of affection, that yet has an uneasy touch of doubt in it, that Jim is obliged to answer.
"No, I did not put a spoke in your wheel; but"—his honesty forcing the admission—"I am not at all so sure that I am the last person who would have done so, if I could."
Byng has wiped his eyes to clear his vision of the blinding tears, and has again directed them to the note, which he has all this while been alternately pressing against his heart, laying upon his forehead, and crushing against his mouth.
"It seems blasphemy to say so of anything that came from her hand," he says, poring for the hundredth time over each obscure word, "but it reads like nonsense, does it not? 'I shall never marry you! I have no right to marry anyone!' No right? what does she mean?"
Jim shakes his head sadly.