soever!" thought the Duke. Perhaps, after all... but no: one could
lay down no general rule. He flung his mantle a little wider from his
breast, and proceeded into Radcliffe Square.

Another farewell look he gave to the old vast horse-chestnut that is
called Bishop Heber's tree. Certainly, no: there was no general rule.
With its towering and bulging masses of verdure tricked out all over in
their annual finery of catkins, Bishop Heber's tree stood for the very
type of ingenuous ostentation. And who should dare cavil? who not be
gladdened? Yet awful, more than gladdening, was the effect that the tree
made to-day. Strangely pale was the verdure against the black sky; and
the multitudinous catkins had a look almost ghostly. The Duke remembered
the legend that every one of these fair white spires of blossom is
the spirit of some dead man who, having loved Oxford much and well, is
suffered thus to revisit her, for a brief while, year by year. And
it pleased him to doubt not that on one of the topmost branches, next
Spring, his own spirit would be.

"Oh, look!" cried a young lady emerging with her brother and her aunt
through the gate of Brasenose.

"For heaven's sake, Jessie, try to behave yourself," hissed her brother.
"Aunt Mabel, for heaven's sake don't stare." He compelled the pair to
walk on with him. "Jessie, if you look round over your shoulder...
No, it is NOT the Vice-Chancellor. It's Dorset, of Judas--the Duke of
Dorset... Why on earth shouldn't he?... No, it isn't odd in the least...
No, I'm NOT losing my temper. Only, don't call me your dear boy... No,
we will NOT walk slowly so as to let him pass us... Jessie, if you look
round..."

Poor fellow! However fond an undergraduate be of his womenfolk, at
Oxford they keep him in a painful state of tension: at any moment they
may somehow disgrace him. And if throughout the long day he shall have
had the added strain of guarding them from the knowledge that he is
about to commit suicide, a certain measure of irritability must be
condoned.

Poor Jessie and Aunt Mabel! They were destined to remember that Harold
had been "very peculiar" all day. They had arrived in the morning, happy
and eager despite the menace of the sky, and--well, they were destined
to reproach themselves for having felt that Harold was "really rather
impossible." Oh, if he had only confided in them! They could have
reasoned with him, saved him--surely they could have saved him! When he
told them