"I was white and trembling with anger. He smiled coolly, and was
careful to choose me one of his best cigars, saying as he handed it:
'Conversation is a science, Marmion. Study it; there is solid
satisfaction in it; it is the only art that brings instant pleasure.
Like the stage, it gets its immediate applause.'

"Well, Mrs. Valiant did ride Carbine on that Saturday. Such a scene it
was! I see it now--the mottled plump of hounds upon the scent, the
bright sun showing up the scarlet coats of the whips gloriously, the long
stride of the hunters, ears back and quarters down! She rode Carbine,
and the fences WERE stiff--so stiff that I couldn't have taken half of
them. Afterward I was not sorry that I couldn't; for she rode for a fall
that day on Carbine, her own horse, she had bought him of Major Karney a
few days before,--and I heard her last words as she lay beside him,
smiling through the dreadful whiteness of her lips. 'Goodbye, Marmy,'
she whispered. 'Carbine and I go together. It is better so, in the full
cry and a big field. Tell the men at Luke's that I hope they will pass
at the coming exams. . . . I am going up--for my final--Marmy.--
I wonder--if I'll--pass.' And then the words froze on her lips.

"It was persecution that did it--diabolical persecution and selfishness.
That was the worst day the college ever knew. At the funeral, when the
provost read, 'For that it hath pleased Thee to deliver this our sister
out of the miseries of this sinful world,' Big Wallington, the wildest
chap among the grads, led off with a gulp in his throat, and we all
followed. And that gold-spectacled sneak stood there, with a lying
white handkerchief at his eyes.

"I laid myself out to make the college too hot for him. In a week I had