He hesitated and did not speak for a moment. He did not deny her right to put the question, but he did not know how to answer it. In many things which related to his words and acts, he was by disposition a frank and open-hearted man, but in proportion to his general frankness were his particular reserves. He had sacred secrets which had to do with convictions, feelings, and principles. He could no more turn his nature inside out to his dearest friend where these were concerned than he could consciously practise self-deception and social hypocrisy. He was even shy with himself in dealing with the deep things of his spirit. Still he owed some explanation to Fan, who had been the happy confidant of the early dreams which had passed away like the morning mist, and who now stood there in such estrangement from him. ‘Oh! all sorts of arguments came in and did their work,’ he said at last, a little vaguely. ‘Some familiarity with learning bred the usual contempt, I dare say. I was only her valet, and so she ceased to be a heroine to me. I have grown a good deal older and wiser—let us hope to begin with—and—well there was one affair which made a considerable impression upon me at the time that I can speak of to you. There are plenty of tradesmen’s sons who find their way to Oxford, but there was just one other baker’s son who got there with me. He or his friends for him made a grand mistake in somehow procuring his admission, under false colours possibly, into a notably aristocratic college. I don’t suppose his people had any very honourable aim in sending him to college at all, at least he himself was a vain, weak fellow who thought chiefly of acquiring associates—whom he called friends, in a rank of life far above his own. I have no doubt he intended to cut the baking trade entirely when he left Oxford, and that he hoped by means of his fellow-Oxonians to hoist himself into polite society. For that end he was willing to make himself generally obliging and useful, poor beggar, to his temporary companions. He would help and back them in their money transactions, cater for their entertainment, and bear more than his share of the brunt of their scrapes.