and balmy; moonrise and dying day disputed the sky; and against its pale blue still scratched over with pale pink shreds and wisps of cloud, the grey college walls, battlemented and flecked with black, rose warmed and transfigured by that infused and golden summer in which all, Oxford lay bathed.  Through open gateways there were visions of green gardens, girdled with lilacs and chestnuts; and above the quadrangle towered the crocketed spire of St. Mary’s, ethereally wrought, it seemed, in ebony and silver, the broad May moon behind it.  Within the hall, the guests were gathering fast.  The dais of the high table was lit by the famous candelabra bequeathed to the college under Queen Anne; a piano stood ready, and a space had been left for the college choir who were to entertain the party.  In front of the dais in academic dress stood the Vice-Chancellor, a thin, silver-haired man, with a determined mouth, such as befitted the champion of a hundred orthodoxies; and beside him his widowed sister, a nervous and rather featureless lady who was helping him to receive.  The guest of the evening had not yet appeared.

Mr. Sorell, in a master’s gown, stood talking with a man, also in a master’s gown, but much older than himself, a man with a singular head—­both flat and wide—­scanty reddish hair, touched with grey, a massive forehead, pale blue eyes, and a long pointed chin.  Among the bright colours of so many of the gowns around him—­the yellow and red of the doctors of law, the red and black of the divines, the red and white of the musicians—­this man’s plain black was conspicuous.  Every one who knew Oxford knew why this eminent scholar and theologian had never become a doctor of divinity.  The University imposes one of her few remaining tests on her D.D’s; Mr. Wenlock, Master of Beaumont, had never been willing to satisfy it, so he remained undoctored.  When he preached the University sermon he preached in the black gown; while every ambitious cleric who could put a thesis together could flaunt his red and black in the Vice-Chancellor’s procession on Sundays in the University church.  The face was one of mingled irony and melancholy, and there came from it sometimes the strangest cackling laugh.

“Well, you must show me this phoenix,” he was saying in a nasal voice to Sorell, who had been talking eagerly.  “Young women of the right sort are rare just now.”

“What do you call the right sort, Master?”

“Oh, my judgment doesn’t count.  I only ask to be entertained.”

“Well, talk to her of Rome, and see if you are not pleased.”

The Master shrugged his shoulders.

“They can all do it—­the clever sort.  They know too much about the Forum.  They make me wish sometimes that Lanciani had never been born.”

Sorell laughed.

“This girl is not a pedant.”

“I take your word.  And of course I remember her father.  No pedantry there.  And all the scholarship that could be possibly expected from an earl.  Ah, is this she?”