ad discussed everything he read with
whosoever would listen, and instructed the world in a child's
straightforward way. At that period he had often improved Lucy's mind on
the subject of Dante, telling her all the details of that wonderful
pilgrimage through earth and heaven, to her great interest and wonder,
as something that had happened the other day. Lucy had not in those days
been quite able to understand how it was that the gentleman of Florence
should have met everybody he knew in the unseen, but she had taken it
all in respectfully, as was her wont. Jock, however, had passed beyond
this stage, and no longer told Lucy, or any one, stories from his
reading; and other sensations had begun to stir in him which he could
not put into words. In this way it was a constant admiration to him to
hear MTutor, who could always, he thought, say the right thing and never
was at a loss. But this evening he was dissatisfied. They were returning
from the theatre by a late train, and nothing but Jock's reputation and
high character as a boy of boys, high up in everything intellectual, and
without reproach in any way, besides the devoted friendship which
subsisted between himself and his tutor, could have justified Mr.
Derwentwater in permitting him in the middle of the half to go to London
to the theatre, and return by the twelve o'clock train. This privilege
came to him from the favour of his tutor, and yet for the first time his
tutor did not seem the superhuman being he had always previously
appeared to Jock. But Mr. Derwentwater was quite unsuspicious of this.

"There is something very much out of the way in the young lady
altogether," he said. "That little black dress, fitting her like a
glove, and no ornament or finery of any description. It is not so with
girls in general. It was very striking--tell me----"

"I didn't think," cried Jock, "that you paid any attention to what women
wore."

Mr. Derwentwater yielded to a gentle smile. "Tell me," he said, as if he
had not been interrupted, "who this young lady may be. Is she a daughter
of the Italian lady, a handsome woman, too, in her way, who was with
your people?" The railway carriage in which they were coursing through
the blackness of the night was but dimly lighted, and it was not easy to
see from one corner to another the expression of Jock's face.

"I don't know," said Jock, in a voice that sounded gruff, "I can't tell
who she is--I never asked. It did not seem any bu