career!

But there would be no time given him. As soon as her Risborough
relations got hold of her, Constance would marry directly.

He went back to the cottage in a sombre mood. Then, as Otto proved to be
in the same condition, Falloden had to shake off his own depression as
quickly as possible, and spend the evening in amusing and distracting
the invalid.

* * * * *

But Fortune, which had no doubt enjoyed the nips she had inflicted on so
tempting a victim, was as determined as before to take her own
capricious way.

By this time it was the last week of term, and a sharp frost had set in
over the Thames Valley. The floods were out north and south of the city,
and a bright winter sun shone all day over the glistening ice-plains,
and the throng of skaters.

At the beginning of the frost came the news of Otto's success in his
musical examination; and at a Convocation, held shortly after it, he put
on his gown as Bachelor of Music. The Convocation House was crowded to
see him admitted to his degree; and the impression produced, as he made
his way through the throng towards the Vice-Chancellor, by the frail,
boyish figure, the startling red-gold hair, the black sling, and the
haunting eyes, was long remembered in Oxford. Then Sorell claimed him,
and hurried him up to London for doctors and consultations since the
effort of the examination had left him much exhausted.

Meanwhile the frost held, and all Oxford went skating. Constance
performed indifferently, and both Nora and Uncle Ewen were bent upon
improving her. But there were plenty of cavaliers to attend her,
whenever she appeared, either on Port Meadow or the Magdalen flood
water; and her sound youth delighted physically in the exercise, in the
play of the brisk air about her face, and the alternations of the bright
winter day--from the pale blue of its morning skies, hung behind the
snow-sprinkled towers and spires of Oxford, down to the red of sunset,
and the rise of those twilight mists which drew the fair city gently
back into the bosom of the moonlit dark.

But all the time the passionate sense in her watched and waited. The
"mere living" was good--"yet was there better than it!"

And on the second afternoon, out of the distance of Magdalen meadow, a
man came flying towards her as it seemed on the wings of the wind.
Falloden drew up beside her, hovering on his skates, a splendid vision
in the dusk, ease and power in ever