of forms, banging of plates, shrill appeals for one thing and another, and general pandemonium amidst which, Speed, picking his way amongst the groups of servants, made his escape. How strange was Millstead to-night, he thought, as he made his way along the covered cloisters to the music-rooms. The rain had slackened somewhat, but the wind was still high and shrieking; the floor of the cloisters, wet from hundreds of muddy boots, shone greasily in the rays of the wind-blown lamps. Over the darkness of the quadrangle he could see Lavery's rising like a tall cliff at the other side of an ocean; and the dull red square that was the window of his own drawing-room. Had Clare gone?--Clare! It was unfortunate, perhaps, that he had called her Clare in his excitement; unfortunate because she might think he had done it deliberately with a view to deepening the nature of their friendship. That was his only reason for thinking it unfortunate. Down in the dark vaults beneath the Big Hall, wherein the piano-rooms were situated, he found Porritt Secundus waiting for him. Porritt was in Lavery's, and therefore Speed was more than ordinarily interested in him. "Do you have to miss your tea in order to have a lesson at this hour?" Speed asked, putting his hand in a friendly way on Porritt's shoulder, as he guided him through the gloomy corridor into the single room where a small light was showing. Porritt replied: "I didn't to-day, sir. Smallwood asked me to tea with him." Speed's hand dropped from Porritt's shoulder as if it had been shot away. His imagination, fanned into sudden perceptivity, detected in the boy's voice a touch of--of what? Impertinence? Hardly, and yet surely a boy could be impertinent without saying anything that was in itself impertinent.... Porritt had been to tea with Smallwood. And Smallwood was Speed's inveterate enemy, as the latter well knew. Was it possible that Smallwood was adopting a methodical policy of setting the Juniors against him? Possibilities invaded Speed's mind in a scorching torrent. Moments afterwards, when he had regained composure, it occurred to him that it was the habit of prefects to invite their Juniors to tea occasionally, and that it was perfectly natural that Porritt, so recently the guest of the Olympian Smallwood, should be eager to tell people about it. IV That night, sitting by the fire before bedtime, Helen said: "Was Clare here a long time before I came in?" Speed answered: "Not very long. She came while I was having three Juniors to tea, and they stayed until after five.... After they'd gone she told me about her holiday in France." "She's been bargaining over her father's books in Paris, so she says." "Well, not exactly that. You see, Mr. Harrington's publishers never arranged for his books to be translated, so she bought the rights off them so as to be able to arrange it herself."