himself had written to the Head maintaining that the whole thing was an accident and a frolic, and insisting that no public or official notice should be taken of it, a fact which had not prevented the Head from writing severely to Falloden, Meyrick, and Robertson, or the fellows of the college from holding a college meeting, even in the long vacation, to discuss what measures should be taken in the October term to put down and stamp out ragging.

Falloden had replied to the Head’s letter expressing his “profound regret” for the accident to Otto Radowitz, and declaring that nobody in the row had the smallest intention of doing him any bodily harm.

What indeed had anybody but himself to do with his own malignant and murderous impulse towards Radowitz?  It had had no casual connection whatever with the accident itself.  And who but he—­and Constance Bledlow—­was entitled to know that, while the others were actuated by nothing but the usual motives of a college rag, quickened by too much supping, he himself had been impelled by a mad jealousy of Radowitz, and a longing to humiliate one who had humiliated him?  All the same he hated himself now for what he had said to Constance on their last walk.  It had been a mean and monstrous attempt to shift the blame from his own shoulders to hers; and his sense of honour turned from the recollection of it in disgust.

How pale she had looked, beside that gate, in the evening light—­how heavy-eyed!  No doubt she was seeing Radowitz constantly, and grieving over him; blaming herself, indeed, as he, Falloden, had actually invited her to do.  With fresh poignancy, he felt himself an outcast from her company.  No doubt they sometimes talked of him—­his bitter pride guessed how!—­she, and Sorell, and Radowitz together.  Was Sorell winning her?  He had every chance.  Falloden, in his sober senses, knew perfectly well that she was not in love with Radowitz; though no one could say what pity might do with a girl so sensitive and sympathetic.

Well, it was all over!—­no good thinking about it.  He confessed to himself that his whole relation to Constance Bledlow had been one blunder from beginning to end.  His own arrogance and self-confidence with regard to her, appeared to him, as he looked back upon them, not so much a fault as an absurdity.  In all his dealings with her he had been a conceited fool, and he had lost her.  “But I had to be ruined to find it out!” he thought, capable at last of some ironic reflection on himself.

He set his horse to a gallop along the moorland turf.  Let him get home, and do his dreary tasks in that great house which was already becoming strange to him; which, in a sense, he was now eager to see the last of.  On the morrow, the possible buyer of the pictures—­who, by the way, was not an American at all, but a German shipping millionaire from Bremen—­was coming down, with an “expert.”  Hang the expert!  Falloden, who was to deal with the business, promised himself not to be intimidated by him, or his like; and amid his general distress and depression, his natural pugnacity took pleasure in the thought of wrestling with the pair.