ching him, whispering
to each other, under the archway that leads to the Front Quadrangle.
Presently, in a sheepish way, they approached him. He halted and looked
up.

"I say," stammered the spokesman.

"Well?" asked the Duke. Both youths were slightly acquainted with him;
but he was not used to being spoken to by those whom he had not first
addressed. Moreover, he was loth to be thus disturbed in his sombre
reverie. His manner was not encouraging.

"Isn't it a lovely day for the Eights?" faltered the spokesman.

"I conceive," the Duke said, "that you hold back some other question."

The spokesman smiled weakly. Nudged by the other, he muttered "Ask him
yourself!"

The Duke diverted his gaze to the other, who, with an angry look at the
one, cleared his throat, and said "I was going to ask if you thought
Miss Dobson would come and have luncheon with me to-morrow?"

"A sister of mine will be there," explained the one, knowing the Duke to
be a precisian.

"If you are acquainted with Miss Dobson, a direct invitation should be
sent to her," said the Duke. "If you are not--" The aposiopesis was icy.

"Well, you see," said the other of the two, "that is just the
difficulty. I AM acquainted with her. But is she acquainted with ME? I
met her at breakfast this morning, at the Warden's."

"So did I," added the one.

"But she--well," continued the other, "she didn't take much notice of
us. She seemed to be in a sort of dream."

"Ah!" murmured the Duke, with melancholy interest.

"The only time she opened her lips," said the other, "was when she asked
us whether we took tea or coffee."

"She put hot milk in my tea," volunteered the one, "and upset the cup
over my hand, and smiled vaguely."

"And smiled vaguely," sighed the Duke.

"She left us long before the marmalade stage," said the one.

"Without a word," said the other.

"Without a glance?" asked the Duke. It was testified by the one and the
other that there had been not so much as a glance.

"Doubtless," the disingenuous Duke said, "she had a headache... Was she
pale?"

"Very pale," answered the one.

"A healthy pallor," qualified the other, who was a constant reader of
novels.

"Did she look," the Duke inquired, "as if she had spent a sleepless
night?"

That was the impression made on both.

"Yet she did not seem listless or unhappy?"

No, they would not go so far as to say that.

"Indeed, were her eyes of an almost unnatural brilliance?"