to them, a danger far more terrible than itself.) Into the station it
came blustering, with cloud and clangour. Ere it had yet stopped, the
door of one carriage flew open, and from it, in a white travelling
dress, in a toque a-twinkle with fine diamonds, a lithe and radiant
creature slipped nimbly down to the platform.

A cynosure indeed! A hundred eyes were fixed on her, and half as many
hearts lost to her. The Warden of Judas himself had mounted on his
nose a pair of black-rimmed glasses. Him espying, the nymph darted in
his direction. The throng made way for her. She was at his side.

"Grandpapa!" she cried, and kissed the old man on either cheek. (Not a
youth there but would have bartered fifty years of his future for that
salute.)

"My dear Zuleika," he said, "welcome to Oxford! Have you no luggage?"

"Heaps!" she answered. "And a maid who will find it."

"Then," said the Warden, "let us drive straight to College." He
offered her his arm, and they proceeded slowly to the entrance. She
chatted gaily, blushing not in the long avenue of eyes she passed
through. All the youths, under her spell, were now quite oblivious of
the relatives they had come to meet. Parents, sisters, cousins, ran
unclaimed about the platform. Undutiful, all the youths were forming a
serried suite to their enchantress. In silence they followed her. They
saw her leap into the Warden's landau, they saw the Warden seat
himself upon her left. Nor was it until the landau was lost to sight
that they turned--how slowly, and with how bad a grace!--to look for
their relatives.