The features, too, being finely cut, and of a clear, pallid tint, stood out against the dark leather of the chair in which the speaker sat.
He was habited, although in his own house, in the academic gown to which his long residence in Oxford had accustomed him.

But it was as a Doctor of the Faculty of Medicine that he had distinguished himself; and although of late years he had done little in practising amongst the sick, and spent his time mainly in the study of his beloved Greek authors, yet his skill as a physician was held in high repute, and there were many among the heads of colleges who, when illness threatened them, invariably besought the help of Dr.Langton in preference to that of any other leech in the place.
Moreover, there were many poor scholars and students, as well as indigent townsfolk, who had good cause to bless his name; whilst the faces of his two beautiful daughters were well known in many a crowded lane and alley of the city, and they often went by the sobriquet of "The two saints of Oxford." This was in part, perhaps, due to their names.

They were twin girls, the only children of Dr.Langton, whose wife had died within a year of their birth.

He had called the one Frideswyde, after the patron saint of Oxford, at whose shrine so many reputed miracles had been wrought; and the other he named Magdalen, possibly because he had been married in the church of St.Mary Magdalen, just without the North Gate.
To their friends the twin sisters were known as Freda and Magda, and they lived with their father in a quaint riverside house by Miltham Bridge, where it crossed the Cherwell.

This house was a fragment of some ecclesiastical building now no longer in existence, and although not extensive, was ample enough for the needs of a small household, whilst the old garden and fish ponds, the nut walk and sunny green lawn with its ancient sundial, were a constant delight to the two girls, who were proud of the flowers they could grow through the summer months, and were wont to declare that their roses and lilies were the finest that could be seen in all the neighbourhood of Oxford.
The room in which the little company was gathered together this clear, bright April evening was the fragment of the old refectory, and its groined and vaulted roof was beautifully traced, whilst the long, mullioned window, on the wide cushioned seat on which the sisters sat with arms entwined, listening breathlessly to the talk of their elders, looked southward and westward over green meadowlands and gleaming water channels to the low hills and woodlands beyond.
Oxford in the sixteenth century was a notoriously unhealthy place, swept by constant pestilences, which militated greatly against its growth as a university; but no one could deny the peculiar charm of its situation during the summer months, set in a zone of verdure, amid waterways fringed with alder and willow, and gemmed by water plants and masses of fritillary.
Besides the two sisters, their learned father, and the two young men in the garb of students who had already spoken, there was a third youth present, who looked slightly younger than the dark faced, impetuous Anthony Dalaber, and he sat on the window seat beside the daughters of the house, with the look of one who has the right to claim intimacy.