Had I not promised, moreover, to stand by him and help him to the end? Could I then, in honour, sit with folded hands, when the chance, however remote, of helping him presented itself? I had always feared Mademoiselle Fédore had not relinquished her designs on the boy, but merely bided her time. For a while my presence frustrated those designs; as, in even greater degree, did his passion for Nellie Braithwaite. But marriage with Nellie forbidden, and he surrounded, as he must be, by the flatteries lavished on, and snares set for, a rich and popular young nobleman in London, was it not too probable that in hours of idleness or reaction from dissipation she might gain an ascendency over him once more? Not only self-interest was involved. He being what he was, might she not only too easily fall genuinely in love with him? I would give her the benefit of the doubt, anyhow. Upon the exact nature of that love, whether of the higher, or the baser and animal sort, I did not choose to dwell. The difference in age, too, struck me now—more versed as I had grown in the ways of the world and of human nature—as no bar to inclination on his part. She was a clever woman and a beautiful one, of a voluptuous though somewhat hard type—to the Empress Theodora I had often compared her in my own mind. Further, as Warcop said to me long ago, did not ‘the she-kite know her business?’—Alas! and for certain, only too well! So sitting there, through the lonely hours, the idea grew on me that the boy was actually in very grave peril; and that—neglect and silence notwithstanding—in his innermost heart he clung to me, and to the lessons of duty and noble living which I had taught him, still. This idea might, as I told myself, be a mere refinement of personal vanity and egoism. Yet I could not put it aside. If he called, even unconsciously, and I failed to answer, a sin of omission and a heavy one would assuredly lie at my door. Finally I decided to seek counsel of my kind old friend the Master. The opportunity of doing so presented itself next day. For the Master had bidden me to a dinner party at the Lodge, given in honour of his widowed sister and her daughters, who were staying with him. This flutter of petticoats in our bachelor, not to say monastic, atmosphere produced in some quarters, I had reason to fancy, a corresponding flutter of hearts. Ladies were conspicuous by their absence in the Cambridge of those days, save during the festivities of the May term; and I own to a certain feeling of mild elation as I found myself seated beside Miss Alice Dynevor, the elder of the two young ladies, at the Master’s hospitable board.