intention of hurting
Radowitz."

"No--only of persecuting and humiliating him!" cried Constance, her eyes
filling with tears. "His hand!--oh, how horrible! If it were really
injured, if it hindered his music--if it stopped it--it would just
kill him!"

"Very likely it is only a simple injury which will quickly heal," said
Falloden coldly. "Sorell has taken him up to town this afternoon to see
the best man he can get. We shall know to-morrow, but there is really no
reason to expect anything--dreadful."

"How did it happen?"

"We tried to duck him in Neptune--the college fountain. There was a
tussle, and his hand was cut by a bit of broken piping. You perhaps
don't know that he made a speech last week, attacking several of us in a
very offensive way. The men in college got hold of it last night. A man
who does that kind of thing runs risks."

"He was only defending himself!" cried Constance. "He has been ragged,
and bullied, and ill-treated--again and again--just because he is a
foreigner and unlike the rest of you. And you have been the worst of
any--you know you have! And I have begged you to let him alone! And
if--if you had really been my friend--you would have done it--only to
please me!"

"I happened to be more than your friend!"--said Falloden passionately.
"Now let me speak out! You danced with Radowitz last night, dance after
dance--so that it was the excitement, the event of the ball--and you did
it deliberately to show me that I was nothing to you--nothing!--and he,
at any rate, was something. Well!--I began to see red. You
forget--that"--he spoke with difficulty--"my temperament is not exactly
saintly. You have had warning, I think, of that often. When I got back
to college, I found a group of men in the quad reading the skit in _The
New Oxonian_. Suddenly Radowitz came in upon us. I confess I lost my
head. Oh, yes, I could have stopped it easily. On the contrary, I led
it. But I must ask you--because I have so much at stake!--was I alone to
blame?--Was there not some excuse?--had you no part in it?"

He stood over her, a splendid accusing figure, and the excited girl
beside him was bewildered by the adroitness with which he had carried
the war into her own country.

"How mean!--how ungenerous!" Her agitation would hardly let her speak
coherently. "When we were riding, you ordered me--yes, it was
practically that!--you warned me, in a manner that nobody--_nobody_
--has any right to use with me--unle