The Midnight Queen Read Online Free PDF Page B

opponents.”
    Then, recognising how much he had nearly revealed, and to whom, he set his teeth and grimly picked up his mattock. Bending his head to his work, he nearly missed Sophie’s sharp, appraising look.
    *   *   *
    For the next se’nnight Sophie applied her mind with some energy to the problem of Graham Marshall.
    Gray was unlike any student the Professor had previously brought home; not only was he not pompous, superior, or condescending, he also very obviously (did he know how obviously?) disliked the Professor—who equally obviously despised him. When Appius Callender invited a student to stay for the Long Vacation, that student was invariably as much like the Professor himself as a man of eighteen or twenty could well be—well born, well dressed, and generally well looking, more interested in the University for the influence, advancement, and connexions it could afford him than for what he might learn there—and was accompanied by a servant or so and an assortment of well-appointed luggage.
    Alasdair Wickliff, for example, who had been the Professor’s guest for the Long Vac. when Sophie was fourteen, and Amelia just seventeen—a senior undergraduate of nineteen or twenty, middling tall and handsome, with vivid blue eyes and fair hair. Like most young men, on first encountering Amelia he had exerted himself to impress her; Amelia, for the first time, had become so besotted as to begin daydreaming of marriage proposals in her sisters’ hearing.
    Sophie had taken a more than usually strong dislike to Wickliff. Ten-year-old Joanna found him desperately dull, he having little interest in horses and none whatever in flying kites or catching frogs. Sophie soon remarked that he flirted not only with Amelia but also with nearly every other young woman, whatever her station, who crossed his path. This she mentioned, cautiously, thinking to put Amelia on her guard, but Amelia only tossed her head and said accusingly, “I ought to have known you would be jealous!”
    In the end, Sophie remembered Wickliff so vividly because he had vanished abruptly from Callender Hall after coming to grief over a pretty Breizhek kitchen-maid. Neither Amelia nor the Professor had ever again mentioned his name, and there had been a coolness between Amelia and Sophie since that summer.
    Gray, unlike Wickliff and all his fellows, had arrived quite alone, with one battered trunk, which apparently was half filled with books, and even Sophie, though growing to like him very much, could not honestly describe him as other than plain.
    The Professor, moreover, issued such invitations with only two purposes in mind: to provide sycophantic company for himself or eligible suitors for Amelia. Gray was self-evidently neither—and, indeed, it appeared to Sophie that her father was not only avoiding Gray’s company himself but attempting to discourage any closer acquaintance with Amelia.
    Yet here was Gray, and here he remained, in a condition that—though he shared their meals, as a guest ought—was very like servitude.
    Further, he spoke and behaved like a gentleman, if an awkward and diffident one, yet his coat-sleeves were an inch too short for his arms, his boots worn down at the heels. Those of his possessions which Sophie had had occasion to see were in a similar state—sturdy goods long used, well kept but often mended. Was he a fraud? An interloper? A gentleman fallen on hard times?
    â€œI do think it very kind of Papa to attempt to improve Mr. Marshall,” said Amelia one morning, when Sophie and she were working together in the morning-room. “But I fear his efforts are quite wasted.”
    â€œOh?” Sophie kept her eyes on her crewel-work, lest her expression reveal how much this subject interested her. “How so?”
    â€œOh! I do not think Mr. Marshall improves at all,” said Amelia. “I begin to believe he is not worth the