In front of the dais in academic dress stood the Vice-Chancellor, a thin, silver-haired man, with a determined mouth, such as befitted the champion of a hundred orthodoxies; and beside him his widowed sister, a nervous and rather featureless lady who was helping him to receive.

The guest of the evening had not yet appeared.
Mr.Sorell, in a master's gown, stood talking with a man, also in a master's gown, but much older than himself, a man with a singular head--both flat and wide--scanty reddish hair, touched with grey, a massive forehead, pale blue eyes, and a long pointed chin.

Among the bright colours of so many of the gowns around him--the yellow and red of the doctors of law, the red and black of the divines, the red and white of the musicians--this man's plain black was conspicuous.

Every one who knew Oxford knew why this eminent scholar and theologian had never become a doctor of divinity.

The University imposes one of her few remaining tests on her D.D's; Mr.Wenlock, Master of Beaumont, had never been willing to satisfy it, so he remained undoctored.