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Well, I grant you the adage that it is useless to bolt the stable door when the horse has been stolen. But what shall be said of the ostler who doesn't know won't even 'inquire' whether the horse HAS been stolen, grand-papa?" "You speak in riddles, Zuleika." "I wish with all my heart I need not tell you the answers.
I had always thought of myself as a creature utterly apart." "Ah, that is how all young people think of themselves. It wears off. Tell me about this wonderful resemblance of ours." He sat attentive while she described her heart to him. But when, at the close of her confidences, she said, "So you see it's a case of sheer heredity, grand-papa," the word "Fiddlesticks!" would out.
She would hear meekly whatever reproaches he might have for her, but their sting was already drawn by the surprise she had in store for him. It was he who seemed a trifle nervous. In his "Well, did you come and peep down from the gallery?" there was a distinct tremour. Throwing aside her cloak, she went quickly to him, and laid a hand on the lapel of his coat. "Poor grand-papa!" she said.
"Oh grand-papa, do you really mean that?" she cried eagerly. "At my age, a man husbands his resources. He says nothing that he does not really mean. The indifference between you and other young women is that which lay also between me and other young men: a special attractiveness... Thousands of slippers, did I say? Tens of thousands. I had hoarded them with a fatuous pride.
"Yet you were very happy with her?" "While she lived, I was ideally happy." The young woman stretched out a hand, and laid it on the clasped hands of the old man. He sat gazing into the past. She was silent for a while; and in her eyes, still fixed intently on his face, there were tears. "Grand-papa dear" but there were tears in her voice, too. "My child, you don't understand.
And, alas," he said, looking at the clock, "I must leave you now. As soon as you have finished dinner, you might, if you would care to, come and peep down at us from the gallery. There is apt to be some measure of noise and racket, but all of it good-humoured and boys will be boys pardonable. Will you come?" "Perhaps, grand-papa," she said awkwardly.
She went straight in, remembering not to smile. "Ah, ah," said the Warden, shaking a forefinger at her with old-world playfulness. "And what have you to say for yourself?" Relieved, she was also a trifle shocked. Was it possible that he, a responsible old man, could take things so lightly? "Oh, grand-papa," she answered, hanging her head, "what CAN I say? It is it is too, too, dreadful."
"Ah, but to-night," he said, indicating his gown, "I cannot be with you. The bump-supper, you know. I have to preside in Hall." Zuleika had forgotten there was to be a bump-supper, and, though she was not very sure what a bump-supper was, she felt it would be a mockery to-night. "But grand-papa " she began. "My dear, I cannot dissociate myself from the life of the College.
"There, there, my dear. I was but jesting. If you have had an agreeable time, you are forgiven for playing truant. Where have you been all day?" She saw that she had misjudged him. "I have just come from the river," she said gravely. "Yes? And did the College make its fourth bump to-night?" "I I don't know, grand-papa. There was so much happening. It I will tell you all about it at dinner."
He evinced a profound interest in the family history, insisted on having the details of its early alliances, and professed a great pride in it, which he had inherited from his father, who, though he had allied himself with the daughter of an alien race, had yet chosen one with the real azure blood in her veins, as proud as if she had Castile and Aragon for her dower and the Cid for her grand-papa.
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