“Oh! anything you like; please yourself.”

Thus enjoined, she went to a bookshelf, and, taking down two volumes, handed one to Mr. Fraser, and then, opening her copy at haphazard, announced the page to her companion, and, sitting down, began to read.

What sound is this, now soft and melodious as the sweep of a summer gale over a southern sea, and now again like to the distant stamp and rush and break of the wave of battle?  What can it be but the roll of those magnificent hexameters with which Homer charms a listening world.  And rarely have English lips given them with a juster cadence.

“Stop, my dear, shut up your book; you are as good a Greek scholar as I can make you.  Shut up your book for the last time.  Your education, my dear Angela, is satisfactorily completed.  I have succeeded with you——­”

“Completed, Mr. Fraser!” said Angela, open-eyed.  “Do you mean to say that I am to stop now just as I have begun to learn?”

“My dear, you have learnt everything that I can teach you, and, besides, I am going away the day after to-morrow.”

“Going away!” and then and there, without the slightest warning, Angela—­who, for all her beauty and learning, very much resembled the rest of her sex—­burst into tears.

“Come, come, Angela,” said Mr. Fraser, in a voice meant to be gruff, but only succeeding in being husky, for, oddly enough, it is trying even to a clergyman on the wrong side of middle-age to be wept over by a lovely woman; “don’t be nonsensical; I am only going for a few months.”

At this intelligence she pulled up a little.

“Oh,” she said, between her sobs, “how you frightened me!  How could you be so cruel!  Where are you going to?”

“I am going for a long trip in southern Europe.  Do you know that I have scarcely been away from this place for twenty years, so I mean to celebrate the conclusion of our studies by taking a holiday.”

“I wish you would take me with you.”

Mr. Fraser coloured slightly, and his eye brightened.  He sighed as he answered—­

“I am afraid, my dear, that it would be impossible.”

Something warned Angela not to pursue the subject.

“Now, Angela, I believe that it is usual, on the occasion of the severance of a scholastic connection, to deliver something in the nature of a farewell oration.  Well, I am not going to do that, but I want you to listen to a few words.”

She did not answer, but, drawing a stool to a corner of the fireplace, she wiped her eyes and sat down almost at his feet, clasping her knees with her hands, and gazing rather sadly into the fire.