He could not recall anything which could satisfactorily account for the terrible disappointment and distress he had felt.

She had only said that she was thirty-one years old, precisely as the vicar had stated on the previous evening, and she had advised him not to marry for some years to come.

But she had laughed, and his feelings had been deeply wounded--he could not tell precisely at what point in the conversation, but he was quite certain that she had laughed, and oh! that terrible Nellie! It was very bitter, and John felt that the best part of his life was lived out.

He went back to his books with a dark and melancholy tenacity of purpose, flavoured by a hope that he might come to some sudden and awful end in the course of the next fortnight, thereby causing untold grief and consternation to the hard-hearted woman he had loved.

But before the fortnight had expired he found to his surprise that he was intensely interested in his work, and once or twice he caught himself wondering how Mrs.Goddard would look when he went back to Billingsfield and told her he had come out at the head of the classical Tripos--though, of course, he had no intention of going there, nor of ever seeing her again..