“Ah, well—­they are getting old!”

Mrs. Mulholland’s tone had softened again, and when it softened there was a wonderful kindness in it.

A door opened suddenly.  The Master came in, followed by Alexander Sorell.

“My dear Edward!” said Miss Wenlock, “how late you are!”

“I was caught by a bore, dear, after chapel.  Horace couldn’t get rid of his, and I couldn’t get rid of mine.  But now all is well.  How do you do, Lady Constance?  Have you had enough tea, and will you come and see my books?”

He carried her off, Connie extremely nervous, and wondering into what bogs she was about to flounder.

But she was a scholar’s daughter, and she had lived with books.  She would have scorned to pretend, and her pose, if she had one, was a pose of ignorance—­she claimed less than she might.  But the Master soon discovered that she had many of her father’s tastes, that she knew something of archaeology—­he bore it even when she shyly quoted Lanciani—­that she read Latin, and was apparently passionately fond of some kinds of poetry.  And all the time she pleased his tired eyes by her youth and freshness, and when as she grew at ease with him, and began to chatter to him about Rome, and how the learned there love one another, the Master’s startling, discordant laugh rang out repeatedly.

The three in the other room heard it.

“She is amusing him,” said Miss Wenlock, looking rather bewildered.  “They are generally so afraid of him.”

The Master put his head into the drawing-room.

“I am taking Lady Constance into the garden, my dear.  Will you three follow when you like?”

He took her through the old house, with the dim faces of former masters and college worthies shining softly on its panelled walls, in the golden lights from the level sun outside, and presently they emerged upon the garden which lay like an emerald encased on three sides by surfaces of silver-grey stone, and overlooked by a delicate classical tower designed by the genius of Christopher Wren.  Over one-half of the garden lay an exquisite shadow; the other was in vivid light.  The air seemed to be full of bells—­a murmurous voice—­the voice of Oxford; as though the dead generations were perpetually whispering to the living—­“We who built these walls, and laid this turf for you—­we, who are dead, call to you who are living—­carry on our task, continue our march: 

     “On to the bound of the waste—­
     On to the City of God!”

A silence fell upon Constance as she walked beside the Master.  She was thinking involuntarily of that absent word dropped by her uncle—­“Oxford is a place of training”—­and there was a passionate and troubled revolt in her.  Other ghostly wills seemed to be threatening her—­wills that meant nothing to her.  No!—­her own will should shape her own life!  As against the austere appeal that comes from the inner heart of Oxford, the young and restless blood in her sang defiance.  “I will ride with him to-morrow—­I will—­I will!”