ers and the slender figure and dark head of Alexander Sorell.

"Don't distress yourself, please. We shall catch them up before we get
to Merton Street. And this only pays the very smallest fraction of your
debt! I understood that if my mother wrote--"

She coloured brightly.

"I didn't promise!" she said hastily. "And I found the Hoopers were
counting on me."

"No doubt. Oh, I don't grumble. But when friends--suppose we take the
old path under the wall? It is much less crowded."

And before she knew where she was, she had been whisked out of the
stream of visitors and undergraduates, and found herself walking almost
in solitude in the shadow of one of the oldest walls in Oxford, the
Cathedral towering overhead, the crowd moving at some distance on
their right.

"That's better," said Falloden coolly. "May I go on? I was saying that
when one friend disappoints another--bitterly!--there is such a thing as
making up!"

There were beautiful notes in Falloden's deep voice, when he chose to
employ them. He employed them now, and the old thrill of something that
was at once delight and fear ran through Constance. But she looked him
in the face, apparently quite unmoved.

"Now it is you who are piling it on! You will use such tragic
expressions for the most trivial things. Of course, I am sorry if--"

"Then make amends!"--he said quickly. "Promise me--if the mare turns out
well--you will ride in Lathom Woods--on Saturday?"

His eyes shone upon her. The force of the man's personality seemed to
envelope her, to beat down the resistance which, as soon as he was out
of her sight, the wiser mind in her built up.

She hesitated--smiled. And again the smile--or was it the May sun and
wind?--gave her that heightening, that touch of brilliance that a face
so delicate must often miss.

Falloden's fastidious sense approved her wholly: the white dress; the
hat that framed her brow; the slender gold chains which rose and fell on
her gently rounded breast; her height and grace. Passion beat within
him. He hung on her answer.

"Saturday--impossible! I am not free till Monday, at least. And what
about the groom?" She looked up.

"I shall parade him to-morrow, livery, horse and all. I undertake he
shall give satisfaction. The Lathom Woods just now are a dream!"

"It is all a dream!" she said, looking round her at the beauty of field
and tree, of the May clouds, and the grey college walls--youth and
youth's emotion speaking in