o
liberty in sharing the cool rosy air of the evening with his Grace. They
noted that he wore in his shirt-front a black pearl and a pink. "Daring,
but becoming," they opined.

The rooms of the Junta were over a stationer's shop, next door but one
to the Mitre. They were small rooms; but as the Junta had now, besides
the Duke, only two members, and as no member might introduce more than
one guest, there was ample space.

The Duke had been elected in his second term. At that time there were
four members; but these were all leaving Oxford at the end of the summer
term, and there seemed to be in the ranks of the Bullingdon and the
Loder no one quite eligible for the Junta, that holy of holies. Thus it
was that the Duke inaugurated in solitude his second year of membership.
From time to time, he proposed and seconded a few candidates, after
"sounding" them as to whether they were willing to join. But always,
when election evening--the last Tuesday of term--drew near, he began to
have his doubts about these fellows. This one was "rowdy"; that one
was over-dressed; another did not ride quite straight to hounds; in the
pedigree of another a bar-sinister was more than suspected. Election
evening was always a rather melancholy time. After dinner, when the two
club servants had placed on the mahogany the time-worn Candidates' Book
and the ballot-box, and had noiselessly withdrawn, the Duke, clearing
his throat, read aloud to himself "Mr. So-and-So, of Such-and-Such
College, proposed by the Duke of Dorset, seconded by the Duke of
Dorset," and, in every case, when he drew out the drawer of the
ballot-box, found it was a black-ball that he had dropped into the urn.
Thus it was that at the end of the summer term the annual photographic
"group" taken by Messrs. Hills and Saunders was a presentment of the
Duke alone.

In the course of his third year he had become less exclusive. Not
because there seemed to be any one really worthy of the Junta; but
because the Junta, having thriven since the eighteenth century, must
not die. Suppose--one never knew--he were struck by lightning, the Junta
would be no more. So, not without reluctance, but unanimously, he had
elected The MacQuern, of Balliol, and Sir John Marraby, of Brasenose.

To-night, as he, a doomed man, went up into the familiar rooms, he was
wholly glad that he had thus relented. As yet, he was spared the tragic
knowledge that it would make no difference.*

* The Junta has