glad to get away

Evidently, he reflected, Lallie was unhappy in B. House; glad to get away. She was afraid he might say something to her about yesterday, and regardless of his expressed wish, nay his command, so far as he could be said to exercise any authority over her, she had disobeyed him. It had never so much as entered the realm of possibilities that she could defy him, and he was hurt. Never until that moment did he realise how much he counted upon her steady affection. He had always been so sure that he and Lallie thoroughly understood each other. From the time, when a little baby in her nurse's arms, she would hold out her own, struggling to be taken by the tall, shy undergraduate; throughout the somewhat stormy years of her childhood, when he was ever her confidant and her ally; during the many holidays he spent with Fitz and his family in Ireland, till the day, two years ago, when he first beheld her in a long frock with her clouds of dusky hair bound demurely round her head, and became aware with a little shock of foreboding that Lallie was growing up--never had he doubted her. And when he had got accustomed to her more grown-up appearance he speedily discovered that the real and essential Lallie was unchanged, that she was just as kind and merry and easily pleased, just as warm hearted and quick tempered, as neat fingered and capable and unexpected, as when her frocks reached barely to her knees .















If I had seen her yesterday I don't believe she would have done this, Tony thought to himself; it's not like her somehow to take the opportunity of my being away to do what she knows I would have done my best to prevent had I been at home. And this young Ballinger--he's no fit guardian for Lallie out hunting. Confound him! I wish he had stayed in his own shire. Fitz said I was not to discourage him, but I'm convinced he never meant she was to go out hunting with him. I suppose he is going to these Chesters, too; probably that's why she's going. I know nothing about the young man, but, like Charles Lamb, 'I'll d---- him at a venture.' It's too bad of Fitz shelving his parental responsibilities like this. Suppose anything happened to her to-day ----















This thought was so disquieting that Tony got up and walked about the room. Finally he opened and read his letters. Then Miss Foster came and added to his anxieties by informing him that A. J. Tarrant, a new boy, had that morning started a bad feverish cold and complained of sore throat.















No rash yet, Miss Foster added gloomily, but of course we've isolated him.















Altogether Tony wished he could have stayed in Oxford. Yet the day seemed very long, and when half-past five at last arrived Tony actually sprinted from the College to B. House.















A great wave of sound met him as he opened the front door. Lallie was playing the overture to Tanh?user. It certainly was neither meek nor repentant music. Nevertheless Tony ejaculated Thank God!