s evil. Killigrew lay opposite Doughty now, looking oddly
girlish with his slim form and colourless face, that would have been
insipid but for his too red mouth. There was a white incisiveness about
Killigrew, however, a flame-like quality quaintly expressed in his hair,
that promised the possibility of many things, and showed up sharply in
comparison with the gross but hard bulk of Doughty. There had been no
real reason till this evening, when Hilaria had told of his
evil-speaking, for Ishmael to dislike Doughty, but now he knew that he
had done so all along.

Doughty hated Ishmael because he did not understand him, and he was of
the breed which hates the incomprehensible. Though he had only joined
the preceding term, Doughty was nearly seventeen, and owing to a spinal
weakness of his youth he had till now been educated at home. He came
from Devonshire, which would not have mattered had he been popular, but
which, as he was not, was frequently thrown at him as a disadvantage.
Now, as he lay beside Ishmael, he stared at him with a something slyly
exultant in his look, but the younger boy failed to meet his eyes and
merely gazed serenely into vacancy. Hilaria settled herself, opened the
bag, and disentangled from the ribbons of her dancing shoes the precious
number of _All the Year Round_ that contained the instalment of "The
Woman in White" they had all been so eagerly awaiting.

The boys left off fidgeting and became mouse-still, while only the low
voice of the girl reading of the helpless lovers, of the terrible
smiling Count Fosco and his grim wife, broke the silence. The boys lay,
thrilled by the splendid melodrama, their little differences forgotten
with the rest of their personal affairs, and so they all stayed, Hilaria
as enthralled as they, while unperceived the light began to fade and
evening to creep over the moor.

CHAPTER XII

SOME AMBITIONS AND AN ANNOUNCEMENT

Hilaria read on till, though she held the page close to her eyes, she
seemed to fumble over the words. She was by then at the end of the
instalment, and when she put the magazine down she pressed her fingers
to her lids and complained that her eyes hurt her. "They often do," she
said; "it's a good thing I'm not going to be an artist like Bunny or the
hero of this story, isn't it?" She dropped her chin into her cupped
palms and sat staring ahead, her eyes shining for all their smarting
lids. "Isn't it, funny," she went on, "that we're all