'By heaven, I believe that the pretty fool really
thinks--that I am going to fight for her!'

To a man who had supped at White's the night before, and knew his age to
be the _age des philosophes_, it seemed the wildest fancy in the world.
And his distaste grew. But to break off and leave her--at any rate until
he had put it beyond question that she had no underthought--to break off
and leave her after placing himself in a situation so humiliating, was
too much for the pride of a Macaroni. The lines of her head and figure
too, half guessed and half revealed, and wholly light and graceful, had
caught his fancy and created a desire to subjugate her. Reluctantly,
therefore, he continued to walk beside her, over Magdalen Bridge, and
thence by a path which, skirting the city, ran across the low wooded
meadows at the back of Merton.

A little to the right the squat tower of the college loomed against the
lighter rack of clouds, and rising amid the dark lines of trees that
beautify that part of the outskirts, formed a _coup d'oeil_ sufficiently
impressive. Here and there, in such of the chamber windows as looked
over the meadows, lights twinkled cheerfully; emboldened by which, yet
avoiding their scope, pairs of lovers of the commoner class sneaked to
and fro under the trees. Whether the presence of these recalled early
memories which Sir George's fastidiousness found unpalatable, or he felt
his fashion, smirched by the vulgarity of this Venus-walk, his
impatience grew; and was not far from bursting forth when his guide
turned sharply into an alley behind the cathedral, and, after threading
a lane of mean houses, entered a small court.

The place, though poor and narrow, was not squalid. Sir George could see
so much by the light which shone from a window and fell on a group of
five or six persons, who stood about the nearest door and talked in low,
excited voices. He had a good view of one man's face, and read in it
gloom and anger. Then the group made way for the girl, eyeing her, as he
thought, with pity and a sort of deference; and cursing the folly that
had brought him into such a place and situation, wondering what on
earth it all meant or in what it would end, he followed her into
the house.

She opened a door on the right-hand side of the narrow passage, and led
the way into a long, low room. For a moment he saw no more than two
lights on a distant table, and kneeling at a chair beside them a woman
with grey disheve