Now he knows "'Golden lads and lasses must Like chimney-sweepers come to dust.'" "Vandal!" cried Sorell--"to twist such a verse!" Nora laughed, threw him a friendly nod, and vanished up the steps of the Bodleian.
But Falloden's hour came! The Encaenia went off magnificently.

Connie, sitting beside Mrs.Hooper in the semicircle of the Sheldonian Theatre, drew the eyes of the crowd of graduates as they surged into the arena, and tantalised the undergraduates in the gallery, above the semicircle, who were well aware that the "star" was there, but could not see her.

As the new doctors' procession entered through the lane made for it by the bedells, as the whole assembly rose, and as the organ struck up, amid the clapping and shouting of the gods in the gallery, Connie and the grey-haired Ambassador, who was walking second in the red and yellow line, grinned openly at each other, while the ex-Viceroy in front, who had been agreeably flattered by the effect produced by his girl-cousin in the august circles of the day before, nodded and smiled at the young lady in the white plumes and pale mauve dress.
"Do you know my cousin, Lady Constance Bledlow ?--the girl in mauve there ?" he said, complacently in the ear of the Public Orator, as they stood waiting till the mingled din from the organ and the undergraduates' gallery overhead should subside sufficiently to allow that official to begin his arduous task of introducing the doctors-elect.
The Public Orator, in a panic lest one of the Latin puns in his forthcoming address should escape him, said hurriedly--"Yes!"-- and then "No"-- being quite uncertain to which girl in mauve the great man referred, and far too nervous to find out.

The great man smiled, and looked up blandly at the shrieking gallery overhead, wondering--as all persons in his position do wonder in each succeeding generation--whether the undergraduates were allowed to make quite such an infernal noise when he was "up." Meanwhile, Constance herself was only conscious of one face and figure in the crowded theatre.

Falloden had borrowed a master's gown, and as the general throng closed up behind the doctors' procession, he took up a position in the rear, just in front of the great doors under the organ loft, which, as the day was very hot, remained unclosed.