"One--the middle-aged man," said a student in the next bed--"is the
schoolmaster she served under--Mr. Phillotson."
"And the other--this undergraduate in cap and gown--who is he?"
"He is a friend, or was. She has never told his name."
"Was it either of these two who came for her?"
"No."
"You are sure 'twas not the undergraduate?"
"Quite. He was a young man with a black beard."
The lights were promptly extinguished, and till they fell asleep the
girls indulged in conjectures about Sue, and wondered what games
she had carried on in London and at Christminster before she came
here, some of the more restless ones getting out of bed and looking
from the mullioned windows at the vast west front of the cathedral
opposite, and the spire rising behind it.
When they awoke the next morning they glanced into Sue's nook,
to find it still without a tenant. After the early lessons by
gas-light, in half-toilet, and when they had come up to dress for
breakfast, the bell of the entrance gate was heard to ring loudly.
The mistress of the dormitory went away, and presently came back to
say that the principal's orders were that nobody was to speak to
Bridehead without permission.
When, accordingly, Sue came into the dormitory to hastily tidy
herself, looking flushed and tired, she went to her cubicle in
silence, none of them coming out to greet her or to make inquiry.
When they had gone downstairs they found that she did not follow them
into the dining-hall to breakfast, and they then learnt that she had
been severely reprimanded, and ordered to a solitary room for a week,
there to be confined, and take her meals, and do all her reading.
At this the seventy murmured, the sentence being, they thought, too
severe. A round robin was prepared and sent in to the principal,
asking for a remission of Sue's punishment. No notice was taken.
Towards evening, when the geography mistress began dictating her
subject, the girls in the class sat with folded arms.
"You mean that you are not going to work?" said the mistress at last.
"I may as well tell you that it has been ascertained that the young
man Bridehead stayed out with was not her cousin, for the very
good reason that she has no such relative. We have written to
Christminster to ascertain."
"We are willing to take her word," said the head girl.
"This young man was discharged from his work at Christminster for
drunkenness and blasphemy in public-houses, and he has come here to
live, entirely to be near her."