At last, a poor student myself, from whom could I learn but
you?"
Redlaw, unmoved, unchanged, and looking at him with a staring
frown, answered by no word or sign.
"I cannot say," pursued the other, "I should try in vain to say,
how much it has impressed me, and affected me, to find the gracious
traces of the past, in that certain power of winning gratitude and
confidence which is associated among us students (among the
humblest of us, most) with Mr. Redlaw's generous name. Our ages
and positions are so different, sir, and I am so accustomed to
regard you from a distance, that I wonder at my own presumption
when I touch, however lightly, on that theme. But to one who - I
may say, who felt no common interest in my mother once - it may be
something to hear, now that all is past, with what indescribable
feelings of affection I have, in my obscurity, regarded him; with
what pain and reluctance I have kept aloof from his encouragement,
when a word of it would have made me rich; yet how I have felt it
fit that I should hold my course, content to know him, and to be
unknown. Mr. Redlaw," said the student, faintly, "what I would
have said, I have said ill, for my strength is strange to me as
yet; but for anything unworthy in this fraud of mine, forgive me,
and for all the rest forget me!"
The staring frown remained on Redlaw's face, and yielded to no
other expression until the student, with these words, advanced
towards him, as if to touch his hand, when he drew back and cried
to him:
"Don't come nearer to me!"
The young man stopped, shocked by the eagerness of his recoil, and
by the sternness of his repulsion; and he passed his hand,
thoughtfully, across his forehead.
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