Chapter XXVIII: A College 'perpendicular.'

A whole year had passed. There was quite time enough in a year for things to straighten themselves--for things that had gone wrong to get right again.

One thing that had once threatened to go wrong--very wrong--had righted itself. The new mistress of the lodge of St. Benedict's was in her right place.

The lodge had taken months to restore and refurnish, and the work had been carried out quite regardless of expense. It only wanted one thing when it was finished--a mistress to preside over its stately hospitality.

The Master had not far to go to find one. He did not go so far as Newnham College; he found what he sought at an unpretentious little house in the village, furnished with very shabby old furniture.

He ought to have been ashamed of himself to have gone back to Mary. No doubt he was ashamed, dreadfully ashamed; but he went back, nevertheless. He did what is always the wisest and the noblest thing to do; he went back and confessed his folly, and asked to be forgiven. He did not ask in vain.

Mary is now the most popular mistress of a college lodge in Cambridge, and the handsomest. She has grown quite young again; the ordeal she has passed through has only added a tender, pathetic nobleness to her beautiful grave face. The hope of her youth, of her mature womanhood, is fulfilled. She cannot help looking prosperous and handsome.

And Lucy? Well, Lucy went back to Newnham when she was well enough--when she had quite recovered--and passed the Little-go with distinction. She worked at her Tripos all through the next year, and Pamela Gwatkin was her coach. She was about as unhappy as a girl with a 'small soul,' as she still described herself, would be, after what she had gone through; but her mathematics diverted her thoughts, and the prospect of her coming Tripos sustained her.

At the end of the year an event happened which affected Lucy's views on the subject of her Tripos; that cut short, in a not wholly unprecedented way, her University career.

At the close of the October term, the Master of St. Benedict's gave what is known in undergraduate parlance as a 'Perpendicular.'

At this particular 'Perpendicular' all the Dons and Donesses in Cambridge were present to do honour to the new mistress of the lodge, and the whole suite of reception-rooms, that had been the subject of such heartburnings to Lucy, were thrown open.

It was the first time that she had ever seen them lit up and filled with such a goodly company. She was there with Maria Stubbs and Pamela Gwatkin, as her cousin's guests. She had not altered much during the year; only her eyes were steadier, and she did not blush so readily.

She ought to have been blushing now, for she had just met an old friend who had taken her hand when they met and had forgotten to give it up again.

It was Pamela Gwatkin's brother.

He was in Orders now; he had been ordained nearly a year, and held a curacy in a village in the West-country, with the magnificent stipend of one hundred and fifty pounds a year.

He had gone through all the familiar rooms of the old lodge with Lucy, but he had hardly recognised them again. Only in the long gallery the faces of the old Masters looked down on him as of old, with a stately welcome in their grave eyes.

He had no idea that the dark, musty old place could have been so changed. He passed through room after room, with Lucy's arm in his; and presently, when she was tired, he sat down in the deep-recessed window of the oak-panelled saloon, where the Masters hold their annual feasts and eat their state dinners.

Full-length portraits of old Masters and Fellows hung on the walls, and above their massive gilded frames--they had been regilt lately--a rich carved frieze of oak went round the room; and above the great open fireplace was a quaint carven mantelpiece that was a sight to see. It was a room to delight the soul of an antiquary.

Lucy watched Pamela's brother as his eyes travelled round the room and took in all these things. He was such a simple, transparent fellow that she could not help reading his thoughts.

'What are you thinking of, Eric?' she asked him presently. She called him Eric.

'I--I?' he said, with a blush. 'I was wondering why you gave up this--how you _could_ give up this!'

'Did you wonder?' she said softly, and her eyes, he saw, were very sweet and tender. He thought she lingered on the 'you,' and he looked at her with a strange trouble in his eyes.

'Yes,' he said with a sigh, 'I don't think many women would have--have given this up lightly. You must have had a reason?'

'Yes,' she said in her low voice, with a quiver in it, and that droop of her pretty mouth that he remembered so well; 'I had a reason.'

Something in her manner more than in her voice struck him, and the trouble in his eyes deepened.

'May I know--will you tell me the reason, Lucy?' he said hoarsely.

'I could tell anyone but you,' she said passionately, and then she turned away her face from him, but not before he had seen that her eyes were full of tears.

Then a strange light came suddenly into his eyes as he looked at her as she sat there in her soft white clinging gown, with her bosom heaving, and the rich colour sweeping over her neck and face.

'You do not mean----Oh, Lucy!' he said, and his voice shook, and the trouble in his eyes gave place to the light of a sudden wild hope.

Whatever she meant, it was whispered so low that it reached no other ear than his.

Before Lucy went back to Newnham that night with her friends she had a little interview with her beautiful hostess. Cousin Mary looked like a queen with her gleaming jewels and her rich dress.

It was not a dress intended to be crushed; it was intended to be put away carefully, and to be worn at no end of grand University receptions and dinner-parties; but Lucy threw herself upon it in the most unfeeling way, and let her foolish tears--they always flowed very copiously--stream down the beautiful satin bosom and over the lovely real lace.

'Oh Mary, congratulate me,' she murmured; 'I am going to marry Eric Gwatkin!'

She was going to marry a curate with one hundred and fifty pounds a year. She had thrown over the Master of a college, and she was asking Cousin Mary to congratulate her!

* * * * *

What can be expected of the children of such a union? They will neither be beautiful nor clever. Probably in a generation or two they will go back to the low estate from which they sprang, and another Lucy may keep the old family stall in the butter-market. Heredity has so many vagaries it is not safe to predict.

The success of the old Master may repeat itself in the male line, and another Anthony--Lucy's boy is called Anthony--may occupy with equal distinction as a Church dignitary another stall elsewhere.

Who can tell?

Meanwhile Lucy is famous for her poultry, and, like her distant progenitor, prides herself on the excellence of her dairy.

THE END.

BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.

NEW LIBRARY NOVELS.

THE IVORY GATE. By Walter Besant, Author of 'All Sorts and
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THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. By Aaron Watson and Lillias
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TRUST-MONEY. By William Westall. 3 vols.

A FAMILY LIKENESS. By Mrs. B.M. Croker. 3 vols.

THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S. By Alan St. Aubyn. 2 vols.

MRS. JULIET. By Mrs. Alfred Hunt. 3 vols.

BARBARA DERING. By Amélie Rives. 2 vols.

GEOFFORY HAMILTON. By Edward H. Cooper. 2 vols.

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