d and
foot, whom he and others were hopefully piloting towards a second class
at least--possibly a first--in the Honour Classical School, had broken
down in health, so that her mother and a fussy doctor had hurried
her away to a rest-cure in Switzerland, and thereby slit her
academic life and all her chances of fame. Both had been used to
come--independently--for the Master was in his own, way far too great a
social epicure to mix his pleasures--to tea on Sundays; to sit on one
side of a blazing fire, while the Master sat on the other, a Persian cat
playing chaperon on the rug between, and the book-lined walls of the
Master's most particular sanctum looking down upon them; while in the
drawing-room beyond, Miss Wenlock, at the tea-table, sat patiently
waiting till her domestic god should declare the seance over, allow her
to make tea, and bring in the young and honoured guest. And now both
charmers had vanished from the scene and had left no equals behind. The
Master, who possessed the same sort of tact in training young women
that Lord Melbourne showed in educating the girl-Queen, was left
without his most engaging occupation.

Ah!--that good fellow, Sorell, was bringing her up to him.

"Master, Lady Constance would like to be introduced to you."

The Master was immensely flattered. Why should she wish to be introduced
to such an old fogey? But there she was, smiling at him.

"You knew my father. I am sure you did!"

His elderly heart was touched, his taste captured at once. Sorell had
engineered it all perfectly. His description of the girl had fired the
Master; and his sketch of the Master in the girl's ear, as a kind of
girlhood's arbiter, had amused and piqued her. "Yes, do introduce me!
Will he ever ask me to tea? I should be so alarmed!"

It was all settled in a few minutes. Sunday was to see her introduction
to the Master's inner circle, which met in summer, not between books and
a blazing fire, but in the small college garden hidden amid the walls of
Beaumont. Sorell was to bring her. The Master did not even go through
the form of inviting either Mrs. Hooper or Miss Hooper. In all such
matters he was a chartered libertine and did what he pleased.

Then he watched her in what seemed something of a triumphal progress
through the crowded hall. He saw the looks of the girl students from the
newly-organised women's colleges--as she passed--a little askance and
chill; he watched a Scotch metaphysical professor