“I’m sure I don’t want to be uncharitable,” cried Lady Augusta, whose heart was kind enough in the main. “And I am sure the dean never was uncharitable in his life: he is too good and enlightened a man to be uncharitable. Half the town says he must be guilty, and what is one to think? Then you would not recommend me to let it make any difference to Miss Channing’s coming here?” “No!” burst forth Roland, in a tone that might have brought down the roof, had it been made of glass. “I’d scorn such wicked injustice.” “If I were you, I’d ‘scorn’ to put myself into these fiery tempers, upon other people’s business,” cried my lady. “It is my business,” retorted Roland. “Better go into tempers than be hard and unjust. What would William Yorke say at your speaking so of Miss Channing?” Lady Augusta smiled. “It was hearing what William Yorke had done that almost decided me. He has broken off his engagement with Miss Channing. And he has done well, Roland. It is not meet that he should take his wife from a disgraced family. I have been telling him so ever since it happened.” Roland stood before her, as if unable to digest the news: his mouth open, his eyes staring. “It is not true!” he shrieked. “Indeed, it is perfectly true. I gathered a suspicion of it from William Yorke’s manner to-day, and I put the question plainly to Miss Channing herself. ‘Had they parted in consequence of this business of Arthur’s?’ She acknowledged that it was so.” Roland turned white with honest anger. He dashed his hair from his brow, and with an ugly word, he dashed down the stairs four at a time, and flung out of the house; probably with the intention of having a little personal explosion with the Reverend William Yorke. CHAPTER XXIX. -- A TASTE OF “TAN.” The cloisters of Helstonleigh were echoing with the sounds of a loud dispute, according as little with their sacred character, as with the fair beauty of the summer’s afternoon. The excitement caused in the college school by the rumour of Lady Augusta Yorke’s having obtained the promise of the head-master that her son should be promoted to the seniorship over the heads of Channing and Huntley, had been smouldering ominously, and gathering greater strength from the very fact that the boys appeared to be powerless in it. Powerless they were: in spite of Tom Channing’s boast at the dinner-table that the school would not stand it tamely, and his meaning nod when Hamish had mockingly inquired whether the school intended to send Lady Augusta a challenge, or to recommend Mr. Pye to the surveillance of the dean.