For in the now crowded hall, filled with the chatter of many voices, a group was making its way from the doorway, on one member of which many curious eyes had been already turned.  In front came Mrs. Hooper, spectacled, her small nose in air, the corners of her mouth sharply drawn down.  Then Dr. Ewen, grey-haired, tall and stooping; then Alice, pretty, self-conscious, provincial, and spoilt by what seemed an inherited poke; and finally a slim and stately young person in white satin, who carried her head and her long throat with a remarkable freedom and self-confidence.  The head was finely shaped, and the eyes brilliant; but in the rest of the face the features were so delicate, the mouth, especially, so small and subtle, as to give a first impression of insignificance.  The girl seemed all eyes and neck, and the coils of brown hair wreathed round the head were disproportionately rich and heavy.  The Master observing her said to himself—­“No beauty!” Then she smiled—­at Sorell apparently, who was making his way towards her—­and the onlooker hurriedly suspended judgment.  He noticed also that no one who looked at her could help looking again; and that the nervous expression natural to a young girl, who realises that she is admired but that policy and manners forbid her to show any pleasure in the fact, was entirely absent.

“She is so used to all her advantages that she forgets them,” thought the Master, adding with an inward smile—­“but if we forgot them—­perhaps that would be another matter!  Yes—­she is like her mother—­but taller.”

For on that day ten years earlier, when Ella Risborough had taken Oxford by storm, she and Lord Risborough had found time to look in on the Master for twenty minutes, he and Lord Risborough having been frequent correspondents on matters of scholarship for some years.  And Lady Risborough had chattered and smiled her way through the Master’s lonely house—­he had only just been appointed head of his college and was then unmarried—­leaving a deep impression.

“I must make friends with her,” he thought, following Ella Risborough’s daughter with his eyes.  “There are some gaps to fill up.”

He meant in the circle of his girl protegees.  For the Master had a curious history, well known in Oxford.  He had married a cousin of his own, much younger than himself; and after five years they had separated, for reasons undeclared.  She was now dead, and in his troubled blue eyes there were buried secrets no one would ever know.  But under what appeared to a stranger to be a harsh, pedantic exterior the Master carried a very soft heart and an invincible liking for the society of young women.  Oxford about this time was steadily filling with girl students, who were then a new feature in its life.  The Master was a kind of queer patron saint among them, and to a chosen three or four, an intimate mentor and lasting friend.  His sixty odd years, and the streaks of grey in his red straggling locks, his European reputation