haw, that is impossible. It may be only your good nature that
prompted you to say this, or it may be that, without intention, I have
somehow led you to look upon her as part of my destiny; but you forget,
or perhaps, I have not told you that we have lost her utterly for the
time being at least, she disappeared quite suddenly. My father and I
have made every effort to trace her, but without the slightest success."

"Then try again," replied Ernshaw, "and I will help in the search. At
any rate, when we do find her, as I am sure we shall some day, if she
will have me, I will ask her to be my wife."

CHAPTER VII.

It was the morning of Commemoration Day and Vane was dressing for the
great ceremony in the Sheldonian Theatre, the conferring of honours and
degrees, the placing of the Hall-mark of the University upon those who
had passed its tests and proved themselves to be worthy metal. Over the
end of the bed hung the brand-new bachelor's gown and silken hood,
which, to-day, for the first time, he would be entitled to wear. They
were the outward material symbols of the victory which he had won
against all competitors.

He was looking far back into his school-boy days and recalling the
dreams he had dreamt of the time when, if the Fates were very kind to
him, he would have taken his degree and would be able to walk about in
all the glory of cap and gown and hood as the masters did on Sundays and
Saints' days.

And now it had come to pass. He had taken as good a degree as the best
of them. In an hour or two he would appear capped and gowned and hooded
on the closing scene of his University career. On one side of him would
be the Chancellor and all the great dignitaries of the University; on
the other the great audience--the undergraduates in the upper galleries;
graduates, tutors and fellows, proud fathers and mothers, delighted
sisters and other feminine relatives, including cousins and others,
together with desperately envious younger brothers making the most
earnest resolves to henceforth eschew all youthful dissipations, to
foreswear idleness for ever, and to 'swat' day and night until they too
had achieved this glorious consummation--vows, alas! to be broken ere
the next school term was many days old, and yet, with not a few of them,
to be renewed later on and honestly kept.

He knew that, to use a not altogether inappropriate theatrical simile,
he would be playing a principal part that day. The cheers and t