ne. He had wished to exhibit to Mr.
Derwentwater this strange phenomenon in the shape of a girl, with a
sense that there was something very unusual in her, something in which
he himself had a certain proprietorship. But when MTutor's eyes
encountered Jock's with an astonished glance of discovery in them, which
seemed to say that he had found out Bice for himself without the
interposition of the original discoverer, Jock felt a thrill of
displeasure, and almost pain, which he could not explain to himself.
What did it mean? It seemed to bring with it a certain defiance of, and
opposition to, this king of men.

CHAPTER XXXI.

TWO FRIENDS.

"Who was that young lady?" Mr. Derwentwater said. "I did not catch the
name."

"What young lady?" To suppose for a moment that Jock did not know who
was meant would be ridiculous, of course; but, for some reason which he
did not explain even to himself, this was the reply he made.

"My dear Jock, there was but one," said MTutor, with much friendliness.
"At your age you do not take much notice of the other sex, and that is
very well and right; but still it would be wrong to imagine that there
is not something interesting in girls occasionally. I did not make her
out. She was quite a study to me at the theatre. I am afraid the greater
part of the performance, and all the most meritorious portion of it,
was thrown away upon her; but still there were gleams of interest. She
is not without intelligence, that is clear."

"You mean Bice," said Jock, with a certain dogged air which Mr.
Derwentwater had seldom seen in him before, and did not understand. He
spoke as if he intended to say as little as was practicable, and as if
he resented being made to speak at all.

"Bice--ah! like Dante's Bice," said MTutor. "That makes her more
interesting still. Though it is not perhaps under that aspect that one
represents to oneself the Bice of Dante--_ben son, ben son, Beatrice._
No, not exactly under that aspect. Dante's Bice must have been more
grand, more imposing, in her dress of crimson or dazzling white."

Jock made no response. It was usual for him to regard MTutor devoutly
when he talked in this way, and to feel that no man on earth talked so
well. Jock in his omnivorous reading knew perhaps Dante better than his
instructor, but he had come to the age when the mind, confused in all
its first awakening of emotions, cannot talk of what affects it most.
The time had been at which he h