was still red, and he swung his stick ferociously
as he strode towards the vicarage. Several little boys in ragged
smock-frocks saw him and thought he had had some beer, even as their own
fathers, and made vulgar gestures when his back was turned.

So poor John packed his portmanteau and left the vicarage early on the
following morning. He sent an excuse to Mr. Juxon explaining that the
urgency of his work called him back sooner than he had expected, and when
the train moved fairly off towards Cambridge he felt that in being spared
the ordeal of shaking hands with his rival he had at least escaped some
of the bitterness of his fate; as he rolled along he thought very sadly
of all that had happened in that short time which was to have been so gay
and which had come to such a miserable end.

Reflecting calmly upon his last interview with Mrs. Goddard, he was
surprised to find that his memory failed him. He could not recall
anything which could satisfactorily account for the terrible
disappointment and distress he had felt. She had only said that she was
thirty-one years old, precisely as the vicar had stated on the previous
evening, and she had advised him not to marry for some years to come. But
she had laughed, and his feelings had been deeply wounded--he could not
tell precisely at what point in the conversation, but he was quite
certain that she had laughed, and oh! that terrible Nellie! It was very
bitter, and John felt that the best part of his life was lived out. He
went back to his books with a dark and melancholy tenacity of purpose,
flavoured by a hope that he might come to some sudden and awful end in
the course of the next fortnight, thereby causing untold grief and
consternation to the hard-hearted woman he had loved. But before the
fortnight had expired he found to his surprise that he was intensely
interested in his work, and once or twice he caught himself wondering how
Mrs. Goddard would look when he went back to Billingsfield and told her
he had come out at the head of the classical Tripos--though, of course,
he had no intention of going there, nor of ever seeing her again.

CHAPTER XI.

Mr. Juxon was relieved to hear that John Short had suddenly gone back to
Cambridge. He had indeed meant to like him from the first and had
behaved towards him with kindness and hospitality; but while ready to
admire his good qualities and to take a proper amount of interest in his
approaching contest for honou