“Well, I really am awfully sorry; but, you see, I’d promised these men at the end of last term, and I quite forgot about it this morning at Heriot’s.” “I see.” “I won’t do it again, I swear.” “You won’t get the chance!” muttered Carpenter, as Devereux ran after his companions. He looked at his watch, and turned to Jan. “There’s plenty of time, Rutter. Which way shall we go?” Jan came out of the shadow of the hedge; he had remained instinctively in the background, and had no reason to think that Evan had seen him. Certainly their eyes had never met. And yet there had been something in Evan’s manner, something pointed in his fixed way of looking at Carpenter and not beyond him, something that might have left a doubt in Jan’s mind if a greater doubt had not already possessed it. “Which way shall we turn?” Carpenter repeated as Jan stood looking at him strangely. “Neither way, just yet a bit,” said Jan, darkly. “I want to ask you something first.” “Right you are.” “There are not so many here that you could say it for, so far as I can see,” continued Jan, the inscrutable: “but from what I’ve seen of you, Carpenter, I don’t believe you’d tell me a lie.” “I’d try not to,” said the other, smiling, yet no easier than Jan in his general manner. “That’s good enough for me,” said Jan. “So what did Devereux mean just now by talking about 'this morning at Heriot’s’?” “Oh, he had breakfast with Heriot, too; didn’t I tell you?” “No; you didn’t.” “Well, I never supposed it would interest you.” “Although I told you I knew something about him at home!” The two were facing each other, eye to eye. Those of Jan were filled with a furious suspicion. “I wonder you didn’t speak to him just now,” remarked Carpenter, looking at his nails. “He never saw me; besides, I’d gone and said all I’d got to say to him yesterday in his study.” “I see.” “Didn’t Devereux tell you I’d been to see him?” “Oh, I think he said he’d seen you, but that was all.” “At breakfast this morning?” “Yes.” “Did Heriot ask him anything about me?” “No.” “Has he told you anything about me at home, Chips?” “Hardly anything.” “How much?” “Only that he hardly knew you; that was all,” declared Carpenter, looking Jan in the face once more. “And I must say I don’t see what you’re driving at, Rutter!” “You’d better go and ask Devereux,” said Jan, unworthily; but, as luck would have it, he could not have diverted his companion’s thoughts more speedily if he had tried. “Devereux? I don’t go near him!” he cried. “He promised to wait for me after chapel, and he cut me for those fellows we saw him with just now.” “Although you were friends at the same private school?” “If you call that friendship! He never wrote to me all last term, though I wrote twice to him!” “I suppose that would be why Heriot asked you both to breakfast,” said Jan, very thoughtfully, as they began walking back together. “I mean, you both coming from the same school.” “What? Oh, yes, of course it was.”