Mr. Rimington's mild eyes flashed fire. "I can scarcely trust myself to speak to you on that subject," he said. "If I do so it is because I feel it my duty as a clergyman to try and bring home to you the enormity of your conduct towards your son. Are you incapable of----" "Oh, don't, don't," interrupted Mr. Binney in a broken-hearted voice. "I see it all. Nothing you could say would be so severe as what I say to myself. I can't bear it. I can't really. But just think what an awful thing it would be for him to have it said that his father was sent down for drunkenness. He would bear the brand of it all his life." "It seems to me," said the Tutor dryly, "that you have already given him something that he will have reason to be ashamed of all his life. I have a great admiration for your son. I tell you candidly, Mr. Binney, that I don't know one other undergraduate who could have held up his head in Cambridge after what he has gone through." "Oh, don't say any more, I beg of you," cried Mr. Binney, cut to the heart. "And don't make things worse for him by sending me down." "If I thought for a moment that your staying up here would make things easier for him," said Mr. Rimington, "I own I should hesitate, although I don't say that my decision would be altered. But it seems to me that the very kindest course to pursue on his account would be to prevent his having any further cause to be shamed by your conduct up here. No, Mr. Binney. You must go down this afternoon. I have spoken to one or two of my colleagues about it, and our decision is irrevocable. I see no use in protracting this painful interview." Mr. Binney pleaded and besought, but all to no avail, and left his Tutor's presence at last, a disgraced and despairing man. The feelings of Lucius towards his father are too painful a subject to dilate upon. Never surely, since the wide doors of Cambridge University were opened to all comers, had any of its members been placed in a more disagreeable position. Looking back on this trying time in after years, Lucius wondered how he could ever have endured life at Cambridge for a single day. But he had attained to that state of sympathetic intimacy with his cousin in which he could pour out some of his troubles to her when they met, and be gently but effectually consoled for them. Betty had never met Mr. Binney, but she knew him by sight, and nourished a fierce and bitter enmity towards him. Lucius met his cousin, on the morning after his father's fall, outside the lecture room of St. John's College, where she was engaged for an hour three mornings in the week. The other girls who were with her gave Lucius a glance and then hurried off through the gate, leaving them alone. "Good-bye, Lucius," she said hastily, "I must go. I don't know what those girls are running away for like that." "Do let me walk back with you, Betty," said Lucius. "I'm so beastly miserable, I don't know what to do."