“And Jock?” said Janet, smiling.  “You don’t expect it of the born soldier-—nor of Armine?”

“I am not sure about Armine, though he may not be strong enough to bear the application.”

“Armine will walk through life like Allen,” scornfully said Janet; “besides he is but fourteen.  Now, mother, why should not I be worthy?”

“My dear Janet, it is not a question of worthiness; it is not a thing a woman could work out.”

“I do not ask you to give it to me now, nor even to promise it to me,” said Janet, with a light in those dark wells, her eyes; “but only to let me have the hope, that when in three years’ time I am qualified, and have passed the examinations, if Bobus does not take it up, you will let me claim that best inheritance my father left, but which his sons do not heed.”

“My child, you do not know what you ask.  Remember, I know more about it than only what you picked up on that morning.  It is a matter he could not have made sure of without a succession of experiments very hard even for him, and certainly quite impossible for any woman.  The exceeding difficulty and danger of the proof was one reason of his guarding it so much, and desiring it should only be told to one good as well as clever-—clever as well as good.”

“Can you give me no hint of the kind of thing,” said Janet, wistfully.

“That would be a betrayal of his trust.”

Janet looked terribly disappointed.

“Mother,” said she, “let me put it to you.  Is it fair to shut up a discovery that might benefit so many people.”

“It is not his fault, Janet, that it is shut up.  He talked of it to several of the most able men he was connected with, and they thought it a chimera.  He could not carry it on far enough to convince them.  I do not know what he would have done if his illness had been longer, or he could have talked it out with any one, but I know the proof could only be made out by a course of experiments which he could not commit to any one not highly qualified, or whom he could not entirely trust.  It is not a thing to be set forth broadcast, while it might yet prove a fallacy.”

“Is it to be lost for ever, then?”

“I shall try to find light as to the right thing to be done about it.”

“Well,” said Janet, drawing a long breath, “three years of study must come, any way, and by that time I may be able to triumph over prejudice.”

There was no time to reply, for at that moment the letters of the second delivery were brought in; and the first that Caroline opened told her that the cold which Armine had mentioned on Saturday seemed to be developing into an attack of a rather severe hybrid kind of illness, between measles and scarlatina, from which many persons had lately been suffering.

Armine was never strong, and his illnesses were always a greater anxiety than those of other people, so that his mother came to the immediate decision of going to Eton that same afternoon and remaining there, unless she found that it had been a false alarm.