She was now dead, and in his troubled blue eyes there were buried secrets no one would ever know.

But under what appeared to a stranger to be a harsh, pedantic exterior the Master carried a very soft heart and an invincible liking for the society of young women.

Oxford about this time was steadily filling with girl students, who were then a new feature in its life.

The Master was a kind of queer patron saint among them, and to a chosen three or four, an intimate mentor and lasting friend.

His sixty odd years, and the streaks of grey in his red straggling locks, his European reputation as a scholar and thinker, his old sister, and his quiet house, forbade the slightest breath of scandal in connection with these girl-friendships.
Yet the girls to whom the Master devoted himself, whose essays he read, whose blunders he corrected, whose schools he watched over, and in whose subsequent love affairs he took the liveliest interest, were rarely or never plain to look upon.