“This is nice of you!—­I wondered whether you’d come!”

“I thought you’d seen too much of me this week already!” he said, smiling—­“but I wanted to arrange with you when I might take you to call on the Master of Beaumont.  To-morrow?”

“I shall be plucked, you’ll see!  You’ll be ashamed of me.”

“I’ll take my chance.  To-morrow then, at four o’clock before chapel?”

Constance nodded—­“Delighted!”—­and was then torn from him by her uncle, who had fresh comers to introduce to her.  But Sorell was quite content to watch her from a distance, or to sit talking in a corner with Nora, whom he regarded as a child,—­“a jolly, clever, little thing!”—­while his mind was full of Constance.

The mere sight of her—­the slim willowy creature, with her distinguished head and her beautiful eyes—­revived in him the memory of some of his happiest and most sacred hours.  It was her mother who had produced upon his own early maturity one of those critical impressions, for good or evil, which men so sensitive and finely strung owe to women.  The tenderness, the sympathy, the womanly insight of Ella Risborough had drawn him out of one of those fits of bitter despondency which are so apt to beset the scholar just emerging, strained and temporarily injured, from the first contests of life.

He had done brilliantly at Oxford—­more than brilliantly—­and he had paid for overwork by a long break-down.  After getting his fellowship he had been ordered abroad for rest and travel.  There was nobody to help him, nobody to think for him.  His father and mother were dead; and of near relations he had only a brother, established in business at Liverpool, with whom he had little or nothing in common.  At Rome he had fallen in with the Risboroughs, and had wandered with them during a whole spring through enchanted land of Sicily, where it gradually became bearable again to think of the too-many things he knew, and to apply them to his own pleasure and that of his companions.  Ella Risborough was then forty-two, seventeen years older than himself, and her only daughter was a child of sixteen.  He had loved them all—­father, mother, and child—­with the adoring gratitude of one physically and morally orphaned, to whom a new home and family has been temporarily given.  For Ella and her husband had taken a warm affection to the refined and modest fellow, and could not do enough for him.  His fellowship, and some small savings, gave him all the money he wanted, but he was starved of everything else that Man’s kindred can generally provide—­sympathy, and understanding without words, and the little gaieties and kindnesses of every day.  These the Risboroughs offered him without stint, and rejoiced to see him taking hold on life again under the sunshine they made for him.  After six months he was quite restored to health, and he went back to Oxford to devote himself to his college work.