And all this while, though he would not look--though he looked at his plate, and at the busts over his head, and the long portraits of Saint Werner's worthies on the walls, and on this side and on that--Kennedy knew full well that Brogten's eye had been on him from beginning to end, and that Brogten was enjoying, with devilish malignity, the sense of power which he had gained from the knowledge of another's sin. The thought was intolerable to him, and, finishing his dinner with hasty gulps, he left the hall. "Brogten, how rude you were to Kennedy," said Lillyston. "Was I?" said Brogten, in a tone of sarcasm and defiance. "No wonder he blushed at your coarse insinuations." "No wonder," said Brogten, in the same tone; "am I the only person who makes coarse insinuations, as you call them?" "It is just like you to do so." "Is it? Oh well, I shall have to make some more, perhaps, before I have done." "Well, you'd better look out what you say to Kennedy, at any rate. He is a fiery subject." "Thank you, I will." This wrangling was very unprofitable, and Lillyston gladly dropped it, not however without feeling somewhat puzzled at the air which Brogten assumed. That night Kennedy was sitting miserably in his room alone; he had refused all invitations, and had asked nobody to take tea with him. He was just making tea for himself, when Brogten came to see him. "May I stay to tea?" he asked, in mock humility. "If you like," said Kennedy. He stayed to tea, and talked about all kinds of subjects rather than the one which was prominent in the thoughts of both. He told Kennedy old Harton stories, and asked him about Marlby; he turned the subject to Home, and really interested Kennedy by telling him what kind of a boy Julian had been, and what inseparable friends he had always been with Lillyston, and how admirably he had recited on speech-day, and how stainless his whole life had been, and how vice and temptation seemed to skulk away at his very look. "You are reconciled to him, then," said Kennedy in surprise.