at, indeed, was true. He
was afraid she would tell him what she owed her dress-makers. Therefore
he steered the talk round to sport, then to the Highlands, then to
Knoydart, then to Alastair Macdonald of Craigiecorrichan, and then Merton
knew, by a tone in the voice, a drop of the eyelashes, that Miss
Maskelyne was--vaccinated. Prophylactic measures had been taken: this
agent ran no risk of infection. There was Alastair.

Merton turned to Miss Willoughby, on his left. She was tall, dark,
handsome, but a little faded, and not plump: few of the faces round the
table were plump and well liking. Miss Willoughby, in fact, dwelt in one
room, in Bloomsbury, and dined on cocoa and bread and butter. These were
for her the rewards of the Higher Education. She lived by copying
crabbed manuscripts.

'Do you ever go up to Oxford now?' said Merton.

'Not often. Sometimes a St. Ursula girl gets a room in the town for me.
I have coached two or three of them at little reading parties. It gets
one out of town in autumn: Bloomsbury in August is not very fresh. And
at Oxford one can "tout," or "cadge," for a little work. But there are
so many of us.'

'What are you busy with just now?'

'Vatican transcripts at the Record Office.'

'Any exciting secrets?'

'Oh no, only how much the priests here paid to Rome for their promotions.
Secrets then perhaps: not thrilling now.'

'No schemes to poison people?'

'Not yet: no plots for novels, and oh, such long-winded pontifical Latin,
and such awful crabbed hands.'

'It does not seem to lead to much?'

'To nothing, in no way. But one is glad to get anything.'

'Jephson, of Lincoln, whom I used to know, is doing a book on the Knights
of St. John in their Relations to the Empire,' said Merton.

'Is he?' said Miss Willoughby, after a scarcely distinguishable but
embarrassed pause, and she turned from Merton to exhibit an interest in
the very original scheme of mural decoration behind her.

'It is quite a new subject to most people,' said Merton, and he mentally
ticked off Miss Willoughby as safe, for Jephson, whom he had heard that
she liked, was a very poor man, living on his fellowship and coaching. He
was sorry: he had never liked or trusted Jephson.

'It is a subject sure to create a sensation, isn't it?' asked Miss
Willoughby, a little paler than before.

'It might get a man a professorship,' said Merton.

'There are so many of us, of them, I mean,' said Miss Will