“It is an education—­of its own kind,” he thought.  “Is it worth more or less than other kinds?”

And he looked round paternally on some of the young girl students then just penetrating Oxford; fresh, pleasant faces—­little positive beauty—­and on many the stamp, already prematurely visible, of the anxieties of life for those who must earn a livelihood.  Not much taste in dress, which was often clumsy and unbecoming; hair, either untidy, or treated as an enemy, scraped back, held in, the sole object being to take as little time over it as possible; and, in general, the note upon them all of an educated and thrifty middle-class.  His feelings, his sympathies, were all with them.  But the old gallant in him was stirred by the tall figure in white satin, winding its graceful way through the room and conquering as it went.

“Ah—­now that fellow, Herbert Pryce, has got hold of her, of course!  If ever there was a climber!—­But what does Miss Hooper say?”

And retreating to a safe corner the Master watched with amusement the flattering eagerness with which Mr. Pryce, who was a fellow of his own college, was laying siege to the newcomer.  Pryce was rapidly making a great name for himself as a mathematician.  “And is a second-rate fellow, all the same,” thought the Master, contemptuously, being like Uncle Ewen a classic of the classics.  But the face of little Alice Hooper, which he caught from time to time, watching—­with a strained and furtive attention—­the conversation between Pryce and her cousin, was really a tragedy; at least a tragi-comedy.  Some girls are born to be supplanted!

But who was it Sorell was, introducing to her now?—­to the evident annoyance of Mr. Pryce, who must needs vacate the field.  A striking figure of a youth!  Golden hair, of a wonderful ruddy shade, and a clear pale face; powerfully though clumsily made; and with a shy and sensitive expression.

The Master turned to enquire of a Christ Church don who had come up to speak to him.

“Who is that young man with a halo like the ’Blessed Damosel’?”

“Talking to Lady Constance Bledlow?  Oh, don’t you know?  He is Sorell’s protege, Radowitz, a young musician—­and poet!—­so they say.  Sorell discovered him in Paris, made great friends with him, and then persuaded him to come and take the Oxford musical degree.  He is at Marmion, where the dons watch over him.  But they say he has been abominably ragged by the rowdy set in college—­led by that man Falloden.  Do you know him?”

“The fellow who got the Ireland last year?”

The other nodded.

“As clever and as objectionable as they make ’em!  Ah, here comes our great man!”

For amid a general stir, the Lord Chancellor had made his entrance, and was distributing greetings, as he passed up the hall, to his academic contemporaries and friends.  He was a tall, burly man, with a strong black head and black eyes under bushy brows, combined with an infantile mouth and chin, long and happily caricatured in all the comic papers.  But in his D.C.L. gown he made a very fine appearance; assembled Oxford was proud of him as one of the most successful of her sons; and his progress toward the dais was almost royal.