der. She gave a little
start of dismay, but scarcely had her lips pouted ere they curved to a
smile--a smile with no malice in its corners.

As the landau rolled into "the Corn," another youth--a pedestrian, and
very different--saluted the Warden. He wore a black jacket, rusty and
amorphous. His trousers were too short, and he himself was too short:
almost a dwarf. His face was as plain as his gait was undistinguished.
He squinted behind spectacles.

"And who is that?" asked Zuleika.

A deep flush overspread the cheek of the Warden. "That," he said, "is
also a member of Judas. His name, I believe, is Noaks."

"Is he dining with us to-night?" asked Zuleika.

"Certainly not," said the Warden. "Most decidedly not."

Noaks, unlike the Duke, had stopped for an ardent retrospect. He gazed
till the landau was out of his short sight; then, sighing, resumed his
solitary walk.

The landau was rolling into "the Broad," over that ground which had once
blackened under the fagots lit for Latimer and Ridley. It rolled past
the portals of Balliol and of Trinity, past the Ashmolean. From those
pedestals which intersperse the railing of the Sheldonian, the high
grim busts of the Roman Emperors stared down at the fair stranger in
the equipage. Zuleika returned their stare with but a casual glance. The
inanimate had little charm for her.

A moment later, a certain old don emerged from Blackwell's, where he had
been buying books. Looking across the road, he saw, to his amazement,
great beads of perspiration glistening on the brows of those Emperors.
He trembled, and hurried away. That evening, in Common Room, he told
what he had seen; and no amount of polite scepticism would convince him
that it was but the hallucination of one who had been reading too much
Mommsen. He persisted that he had seen what he described. It was not
until two days had elapsed that some credence was accorded him.

Yes, as the landau rolled by, sweat started from the brows of the
Emperors. They, at least, foresaw the peril that was overhanging Oxford,
and they gave such warning as they could. Let that be remembered to
their credit. Let that incline us to think more gently of them. In their
lives we know, they were infamous, some of them--"nihil non commiserunt
stupri, saevitiae, impietatis." But are they too little punished, after
all? Here in Oxford, exposed eternally and inexorably to heat and frost,
to the four winds that lash them and the rains that wea