Eric Gwatkin was doubtful about him, too. He was more anxious about Edgell's Tripos than he was about his own Special. He couldn't rest before he went to bed without coming over and seeing if he was all right. He found his oak sported, and he had to knock a good many times before Edgell would let him in. 'Confound it----' he began, and then he saw Eric and stopped. 'Oh, it's you, Wattles!' He didn't say it very graciously, and Eric was sorry he had disturbed him. He really looked in working trim. He had thrown off his coat, and he was sitting in his shirt-sleeves. He wore a flannel shirt, and the collar was open and showed his white throat and chest, as it had showed it that day when Lucy leaned over the bed and put on the wet bandage. It showed, too, what it had not shown on that day, when a scarf was thrown over the throat--an ugly scar extending for some inches beneath the left ear. It was still purple and red and discoloured--a hideous livid mark on the beautiful white skin. Eric shuddered when he saw it. The sight of it always made him shudder to think what a near thing it was--what _might_ have been! He could not understand how Edgell could bear to see it in the glass, could bear to uncover it, that others coming in might see it. 'I am sorry to disturb you, old man,' he said, looking round at the work on the table, and the books lying open before Edgell. 'I only looked round to see--if--if you were all right.' 'To see if I had cut my throat again,' said Edgell calmly. There was a shade of bitterness in his voice, and his lips curled slightly with amusement or scorn, or both. They were beautiful clear-cut lips, full and tender as a woman's, and they had a way of curving when he spoke. They never quivered, they curved; and his nostrils dilated. It was a strong face, with a massive square jaw, but it had these nervous tricks. 'Very kind of you, Wattles,' he went on with a laugh; 'but I'm not going to repeat that performance again--at least, not for the present. I'm going in for my Trip--and--and I'm going to marry Miss Lucy.' Gwatkin's face fell. 'I don't think this is a time to talk of marrying,' he said, with a certain hesitation in his voice, and the cloud on his plain, homely face deepening. 'The poor old Master is dying.' 'So much the more reason to talk about it. Lucy will want a home. She won't be able to stay up at Newnham, she tells me; she will have no one but her cousin Mary when the Master is dead, and the old lady. I think I shall ask her to-morrow. I should like her to feel that she will not be left friendless when the end comes.' 'I should wait till after the exam., if I were you. I shouldn't let anything interfere with the exam. You will have all your life to marry in.' Edgell lay back in his chair and laughed good-naturedly at his Mentor. 'Anyone would think, Wattles, that you wanted to marry her yourself.' There was no occasion for that very common-place-looking young man to blush so dreadfully.