May had gradually moved to the door ready to go out. Now she opened it.
So this was the young woman to whom the Warden had bound himself, and this was his future mother-in-law!
May left the breakfast-room abruptly and without a word.
She mounted the stairs swiftly. She wanted to be alone. As the servants were still moving about upstairs, she went into the drawing-room.
There was no one there but that living portrait of Stephen Langley, and he was looking at her across the wide space between them with an almost imperceptible sneer--so she thought.
There is little left in Christ Church of the simplicity and piety of the Age of Faith. It was rebuilt when the fine spiritual romanticism of our architectural adolescence had coarsened into a prosperous and prosaic middle age.
The western façade of the College is fine, but it is ostentatious for its purpose, and when one passes under Tom Tower and enters the quadrangle there is something dreary in the terraces that were intended to be cloistered and the mean windows of the ground floor that were intended to be hidden.
"It is like Harding," said Bingham to himself, as he strolled in with a parcel under his arm. "He is always mistaking Mrs. Grundy for the Holy Ghost. But Harding has his uses," he went on thinking, "and so has Tom Quod--it makes one thankful that Wolsey died before he had time to finish ruining the cathedral."
An elderly canon of Christ Church, with a fine profile and dignified manner, stopped Bingham and demanded to know what he was carrying under his arm.
"Nothing for the wounded," said Bingham. "I've bought a green table-cloth and a pair of bedroom slippers for myself. I've just come from a Sale in which some Oxford ladies are interested. One of the many good works with which we are going strong nowadays."
The Canon turned and walked with Bingham. "Do you know Boreham?" he asked rather abruptly.
"I met him a moment ago. He is taking some lady over the college. I met him at Middleton's, I think, not so long ago."
"He's a connection of Middleton's," said Bingham.
"Oh," said the Canon, "is he? A remarkable person. He gave me his views on Eugenics, I remember."
"He would be likely to give you his views," said Bingham. "Did he want to know yours?"