ed,
and a long train curving after it, under a flight of smoke. It grew
and grew. Louder and louder, its noise foreran it. It became a furious,
enormous monster, and, with an instinct for safety, all men receded
from the platform's margin. (Yet came there with it, unknown to them,
a danger far more terrible than itself.) Into the station it came
blustering, with cloud and clangour. Ere it had yet stopped, the door of
one carriage flew open, and from it, in a white travelling dress, in a
toque a-twinkle with fine diamonds, a lithe and radiant creature slipped
nimbly down to the platform.

A cynosure indeed! A hundred eyes were fixed on her, and half as many
hearts lost to her. The Warden of Judas himself had mounted on his nose
a pair of black-rimmed glasses. Him espying, the nymph darted in his
direction. The throng made way for her. She was at his side.

"Grandpapa!" she cried, and kissed the old man on either cheek. (Not a
youth there but would have bartered fifty years of his future for that
salute.)

"My dear Zuleika," he said, "welcome to Oxford! Have you no luggage?"

"Heaps!" she answered. "And a maid who will find it."

"Then," said the Warden, "let us drive straight to College." He offered
her his arm, and they proceeded slowly to the entrance. She chatted
gaily, blushing not in the long avenue of eyes she passed through. All
the youths, under her spell, were now quite oblivious of the relatives
they had come to meet. Parents, sisters, cousins, ran unclaimed about
the platform. Undutiful, all the youths were forming a serried suite to
their enchantress. In silence they followed her. They saw her leap into
the Warden's landau, they saw the Warden seat himself upon her left. Nor
was it until the landau was lost to sight that they turned--how slowly,
and with how bad a grace!--to look for their relatives.

Through those slums which connect Oxford with the world, the landau
rolled on towards Judas. Not many youths occurred, for nearly all--it
was the Monday of Eights Week--were down by the river, cheering the
crews. There did, however, come spurring by, on a polo-pony, a very
splendid youth. His straw hat was encircled with a riband of blue and
white, and he raised it to the Warden.

"That," said the Warden, "is the Duke of Dorset, a member of my College.
He dines at my table to-night."

Zuleika, turning to regard his Grace, saw that he had not reined in and
was not even glancing back at her over his shoul