Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/16

 youth—a pedestrian, and very different—saluted the Warden. He wore a black jacket, rusty and amorphous, His trousers were too short, and he himself was too short: almost a dwarf. His face was as plain as his gait was undistinguished. He squinted behind spectacles,

"And who is that?" asked Zuleika.

A deep flush overspread the cheek of the Warden. "That," he said, "is also a member of Judas. His name, I believe, is Noaks."

"Is he dining with us to-night?" asked Zuleika,

"Certainly not," said the Warden. "Most decidedly not."

Noaks, unlike the Duke, had stopped for an ardent retrospect. He gazed till the landau was out of his short sight; then, sighing, resumed his solitary walk.

The landau was rolling into "the Broad," over that ground which had once blackened under the fagots lit for Latimer and Ridley. It rolled past the portals of Balliol and of Trinity, past the Ashmolean. From those pedestals which intersperse the railing of the Sheldonian, the high grim busts of the Roman Emperors stared down at the fair stranger in the equipage. Zuleika returned their stare with but a casual glance. The inanimate had little charm for her.

A moment later, a certain old don emerged from Blackwell's, where he had been buying books.