was Arnold Grey. Throughout a life spent entirely within the college
walls, he had, from freshman to fellow, from thence to tutor, and so on
to the early dignity of mastership, the most extraordinary faculty of
making people do whatsoever he liked---ay, and enjoy the doing of it.
Friends, acquaintances, undergraduates, even down to children and
servants, all did, more or less, sooner or later, the good pleasure of Dr.
Grey. Perhaps the secret of this was that his "pleasure" was never
merely his own. None wield such absolute power over others as those
who think little about themselves.

Had circumstance, or his own inclination, led him out farther into the
world, he might have been noticeable there, for he had very great and
varied acquirements---more acquirements perhaps, than originalities.
He had never written a book, but he had read almost every book that
ever was written--or, at least, such was the belief current in
Avonsbridge. In his study he was literally entombed in books---
volumes in all languages--and Avonsbridge supposed him able to read
them all. How far this was a popular superstition, and to what length
his learning went, it is impossible to say. But nobody ever came quite
to the end of it. He was a silent, modest man, who never spoke much
of what he knew, or of himself in any wise. His strongest outward
characteristic was quietness, both of manner, speech, motions,
springing, it appeared, out of a corresponding quietness of soul.
Whether it had been born with him, or through what storms of human
passion and suffering he had attained to this permanent central calm,
who could say? Certainly nobody knew or was likely to know; for the
Master of Saint Bede's was a person, the depth of whose nature could
not be fathomed easily with any line. Possibly because, old as he was,
it happened, as does happen in some lives, that the right plumb-line, by
the right hand, had never been dropped yet.