His feelings, his sympathies, were all with them.

But the old gallant in him was stirred by the tall figure in white satin, winding its graceful way through the room and conquering as it went.
"Ah--now that fellow, Herbert Pryce, has got hold of her, of course! If ever there was a climber!--But what does Miss Hooper say ?" And retreating to a safe corner the Master watched with amusement the flattering eagerness with which Mr.Pryce, who was a fellow of his own college, was laying siege to the newcomer.

Pryce was rapidly making a great name for himself as a mathematician.

"And is a second-rate fellow, all the same," thought the Master, contemptuously, being like Uncle Ewen a classic of the classics.

But the face of little Alice Hooper, which he caught from time to time, watching--with a strained and furtive attention--the conversation between Pryce and her cousin, was really a tragedy; at least a tragi-comedy.