"Better go into tempers than be
hard and unjust. What would William Yorke say at your speaking so of
Miss Channing?"
Lady Augusta smiled. "It was hearing what William Yorke had done that
almost decided me. He has broken off his engagement with Miss Channing.
And he has done well, Roland. It is not meet that he should take his
wife from a disgraced family. I have been telling him so ever since it
happened."
Roland stood before her, as if unable to digest the news: his mouth
open, his eyes staring. "It is not true!" he shrieked.
"Indeed, it is perfectly true. I gathered a suspicion of it from
William Yorke's manner to-day, and I put the question plainly to Miss
Channing herself. 'Had they parted in consequence of this business of
Arthur's?' She acknowledged that it was so."
Roland turned white with honest anger. He dashed his hair from his
brow, and with an ugly word, he dashed down the stairs four at a time,
and flung out of the house; probably with the intention of having a
little personal explosion with the Reverend William Yorke.
CHAPTER XXIX.
A TASTE OF "TAN."
The cloisters of Helstonleigh were echoing with the sounds of a loud
dispute, according as little with their sacred character, as with the
fair beauty of the summer's afternoon.
The excitement caused in the college school by the rumour of Lady
Augusta Yorke's having obtained the promise of the head-master that her
son should be promoted to the seniorship over the heads of Channing and
Huntley, had been smouldering ominously, and gathering greater strength
from the very fact that the boys appeared to be powerless in it.
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