his particular engagement--hateful,
when he accepted it, by reason of his love--was now impossible for
the reason which had made him take so ignominiously to his heels this
morning. He curtly told the Scot not to expect him.

"Is SHE not coming?" gasped the Scot, with quick suspicion.

"Oh," said the Duke, turning on his heel, "she doesn't know that I
shan't be there. You may count on her." This he took to be the very
truth, and he was glad to have made of it a thrust at the man who had
so uncouthly asserted himself last night. He could not help smiling,
though, at this little resentment erect after the cataclysm that had
swept away all else. Then he smiled to think how uneasy Zuleika would
be at his absence. What agonies of suspense she must have had all this
morning! He imagined her silent at the luncheon, with a vacant gaze at
the door, eating nothing at all. And he became aware that he was rather
hungry. He had done all he could to save young Oxford. Now for some
sandwiches! He went into the Junta.

As he rang the dining-room bell, his eyes rested on the miniature of
Nellie O'Mora. And the eyes of Nellie O'Mora seemed to meet his in
reproach. Just as she may have gazed at Greddon when he cast her off,
so now did she gaze at him who a few hours ago had refused to honour her
memory.

Yes, and many other eyes than hers rebuked him. It was around the walls
of this room that hung those presentments of the Junta as focussed,
year after year, in a certain corner of Tom Quad, by Messrs. Hills and
Saunders. All around, the members of the little hierarchy, a hierarchy
ever changing in all but youth and a certain sternness of aspect that
comes at the moment of being immortalised, were gazing forth now with a
sternness beyond their wont. Not one of them but had in his day handed
on loyally the praise of Nellie O'Mora, in the form their Founder had
ordained. And the Duke's revolt last night had so incensed them that
they would, if they could, have come down from their frames and walked
straight out of the club, in chronological order--first, the men of
the 'sixties, almost as near in time to Greddon as to the Duke, all
so gloriously be-whiskered and cravated, but how faded now, alas, by
exposure; and last of all in the procession and angrier perhaps than any
of them, the Duke himself--the Duke of a year ago, President and sole
Member.

But, as he gazed into the eyes of Nellie O'Mora now, Dorset needed not
for penitence the