CHAPTER IV.

FORESHADOWINGS.

THE two friends repaired to Lockwood's rooms, each full of his own thoughts, springing from the new era at which they had arrived, and not sorry to indulge a little in their mutual interchange. While Lockwood busied himself in re-kindling the smouldering fire, and in placing his kettle on the embers, Grantley threw himself into a lounging-chair, and silently, with folded hands, was rapt into visions of future time, whence even the announcement that tea had been brewed with difficulty roused him.

แ

'Grantley, old fellow," said his friend, as they sat down to tea, "you are a fortunate man to begin your work here so auspiciously. I'm tempted more than a little to covet your happiness."

"Fortunate! Ah! you may well say so. But, surely, with your notion as to the joys of spirit-communion, night and day, with the dead worthies of Greece and Rome, you can't enter into my feelings."

"Granted at once; but I am afraid for you. I'm quite ready to admit that the thought of Miss Cecil must give you great happiness, confirmed old bachelor as I feel myself to be. But we shall see who of us will be first in the race now. All I care about is to get a college fellowship.”

"Yes, and walk about the streets a stiff, disagreeable old don, with face of yellowishwhite, while I am a family man. And as for

your beating me at college, perish the thought. Did you ever beat me at school? No, the boot belongs to the other leg. Why, man,

the heroines of Greek tragedy shall have a new individuality and reality for me now. I shall find out traits in the stout-hearted Electra, the inspired Cassandra, the faithful Antigone, that shall at once bring up my Madeline's image before me. They shall praise my acumen and deep insight into the poet's creations in the school, and you will turn out to be a false prophet after all."

"Well, be it so, with all my heart, Grantley, but if you will addict yourself to these brown studies, you'll have a fit of the same kind in the schools, and it might be thought rather indicative of 'something wrong somewhere,' as the saying is, if, when asked who was the hero of Thermopyla, you were to reply, 'Madeline.' Fancy the intense horror of a celibate old fellow-just such an one as I mean to be -on receiving such a reply. And methinks a little hallucination must possess you now, for I don't well see how, without doing violence to Miss Cecil's calm, untroubled heart and feminine retiredness, you can discover

points of unison between her and the heroines you have named."

"Well, well, you may be right, my dear fellow. I have rather a loose hold on logic to-night; and, to tell you confidentially a piece of my mind, I do begin to think a little less highly of Aldrich than I did some time ago."

Lockwood smiled rather gravely as he replied-

"You're a comical specimen of the genus homo,' my friend. I thought you were all for Aldrich and his science not very long ago, but now-"

"Now,-circumstances alter cases-you see, I have suddenly discovered myself to be a man of taste, and a lover of the ideal rather than of the real. If one ardently clings to the one, there must be, to some extent at least, a growing distaste towards the other."

Lockwood was again silent for some time, and rested his head on his hand thoughtfully. At length, looking up, he said—

"Grantley, I knew a man, a splendid fellow he was, who might, with only the due amount of trouble, have carried off every honour in his reach. But, to my utter astonishment and consternation, on the appearance of the class-list in the Times, I found his name was not there. Making enquiries of a mutual friend, he told me that this man's tutor, on hearing of his disappointment in the examination, remarked to him, ' Mr. Blank, I'm sorry for you; you might have done yourself great credit if you hadn't fallen in love and written poetry.' Take you the moral

home."

Grantley rose uneasily. His face wore a restless expression, as though he were struggling to throw off some inward weight.

"You'll throw away all your rhetoric on me to-night. I can't look at things now through the old common-sense medium. I can't tell how on earth I shall endure these four dreary years. How can I reconcile myself to the trial of association with men who