So it was that a young man, hurrying across the campus in gay mood, gave a start of astonishment when he met the professor, and guessed the rose in his coat to be one of those he had dedicated to this first happy day of a love striven for against long odds and won. It was not the better part of him that had triumphed the day before, and it may have been the fight within which made him so readily resentful and so quick to show it, when he paused at the window of the professor's house to greet the gay trio there. And it was some baser part of him which, when he read Frances' tell-tale face, the faint flush, the droop of the lids, while he talked gayly with Elizabeth Martin, urged him to see how far he might torment her. Having played the daring game once, he must play it again and again in the few short stormy days which followed. Prompted by some unknown devil within him, bred of the fight which he lacked the courage to face and to decide, he must watch her tell-tale face to see how he had aroused feelings Frances had never dreamed of and hated while she suffered them--must laugh and talk with Elizabeth Martin with admiration in his eyes and flattery on his lips, and to see, meanwhile, the wonder in Frances' eyes, and the pride which in the end concealed it--must seek, at last, some hour alone with her, manoeuvre for that hour, and watch the resentment she disdained to name, die away beneath the magnetism of his love-making. Even then a fierce joy ruled him, prompting him to a lavish generosity in which the whole household shared. "Ise done sick o' seein' dat flower boy," declared Susan, savagely, to Frances, in a kitchen interview. "Sho' as de brekkus bell rings, he rings de nex', an' he's gettin' sassy as if he run de whole business an' brung 'em heself." Frances only laughed. "An' if yuh eats much mo' dat candy layin' erroun', I'll be plumb scared o' yuh eatin' yo' vittles." "You shall have a box for yourself," teased Frances. "Me! De Lawd knows I don't want none! I'd ruther hab one o' dem plump partridges Marse Edward brought yestiddy dan all de choclits yuh can rake and scrape." "You shall have that, too; broil them for supper." "Who's gwine be hyar?" "No one but us." "Humph! dyar'll be jes' ernuff." Susan was not going to serve the game one young man had taken a long tramp to shoot, for another who did not stand so high in her graces. Young Montague had been in the day before.