209

XX. SHOPPING 217

XXI. THE SOUL OF MRS. POTTEN 227

XXII. MR. BOREHAM'S PROPOSAL 236

XXIII. BY MOONLIGHT 251

XXIV. A CAUSE AND IMPEDIMENT 259

XXV. CONFESSIONS 267

XXVI. THE ANXIETIES OF LOUISE 280

XXVII. THE FORGIVENESS OF THE FATES 290

XXVIII. ALMA MATER 301

XXIX. DINNER 310

XXX. THE END OF BELINDA AND CO. 319

XXXI. A FAREWELL 331

XXXII. THE WARDEN HURRIES 343

THE NEW WARDEN

CHAPTER I

THE WARDEN'S LODGINGS

The Founders and the Benefactors of Oxford, Princes, wealthy priests,
patriotic gentlemen, noble ladies with a taste for learning; any of
these as they travelled along the high road, leaving behind them
pastures, woods and river, and halted at the gates of the grey sacred
city, had they been in melancholy mood, might have pictured to
themselves all possible disasters by fire and by siege that could mar
this garnered glory of spiritual effort and pious memory. Fire and siege
were the disasters of the old days. But a new age has it own
disasters--disasters undreamed of in the old days, and none of these
lovers of Oxford as they entered that fair city, ever could have
foretold that in time to come Oxford would become enclosed and well-nigh
stifled by the peaceful encroachment of an endless ocean of friendly red
brick, lapping to its very walls.

The wonder is that Oxford still exists, for the free jerry-builder of
free England, with his natural right to spoil a landscape or to destroy
the beauty of an ancient treasure house, might have forced his cheap
villas into the very heart of the city; might have propped his shameless
bricks, for the use of Don and of shopkeeper, against the august grey
college walls: he might even have insulted and defaced that majestic
street whose towers and spires dream above the battlemented roofs and
latticed windows of a more artistic age.

But why didn't he? Why didn't he, clothed in the sanctity of cheapness,
desecrate the inner shrine?

Th