“I have one more,” he answered, speaking hurriedly, “but I have never sung it before, and am just a little in doubt how to begin. I think if I got the measure of it I could carry it on, but am not sure.” “Is it that you have been thinking about so long?” “Yes. There is a chorus to it, and there you must help me.” “How can I if I don’t know it?” “If I can sing a song I never tried before, perhaps you could do the same with the chorus.” “Very well, let me hear the song. Is it one of those fighting ballads?” “No. It is a love song, pure and simple.” “I like the others better. Brave and noble actions are the only deeds worthy of poetry.” “I used to think that myself, but I have come to change my mind. It seems to me now that true love is the only theme for either song or story.” “Oh!” said the girl, with a coldness that froze instantly his budding enthusiasm. She sat up straighter on her horse, and turned her face resolutely toward Oxford, as if she did not approve the tendency of the conversation. Armstrong was stricken dumb at finding his indirect course thus blocked before him. The girl was the first to speak. “I wonder how soon we will be in sight of Oxford,” she said. “Not for a long time, I hope.” “Why do you say that? Are you not as eager as I to reach Oxford?” “There are some important matters to be settled before we come to the end of our journey.” Frances directed upon him a look of troubled resolution. Intuitively she knew that they were come to the edge of a declaration which she had hoped might be avoided. Several times on the way the danger seemed to approach and vanish, but now the glow of his luminous eyes were not to be mistaken. In them she read a consuming love of herself which was not to be balked, yet which must be balked, and so it became now or never with her, as it was with him. Whatever words he found would be less eloquent than the glances he had before now cast upon her, and it was well to have the event over and done with. “What important matters are to be settled?” she asked firmly. All courage seemed to desert him under the intensity of her survey, but with the dourness of his race he urged himself forward, yet not in a direct line. Something of the military strategy with which he would approach a fortress insinuated itself into his love-making. “We must decide in what guise you are to enter Oxford.” This remark certainly had the effect of throwing the holder of the fortress off her guard. It swept away the tribulation from her brow. After all, the case might not be so serious as she had thought, and jubilantly she welcomed the respite, for she had no wish to add a humiliation to the wrong which fate had decreed she should work upon him. She breathed a sigh of relief and said: “What guise? I’m afraid I do not understand.”