It was dated Tuesday, and this was Wednesday morning. I hadn't opened my letters before seeing last night's charges at nine o'clock; and it was now just ten. In a moment the full terror of the situation flashed upon me. She had started; she was already almost here; there was no possibility of telegraphing to stop her; before I could do anything, she would have arrived, have taken rooms at the Randolph, and have come round in her queer American manner to call upon me. There was not a moment to be lost. I must rush down to the station and meet her--in full academicals, velvet sleeves and all, for a Proctor must never be seen in the morning in mufti. If there had been half an hour more, I could have driven round by the Parks and called for my sister Annie, who was married to the Rev. Theophilus Sheepshanks, Professor of Comparative Osteology, and who might have helped me out of the scrape. But as things stood, I was compelled to burst down the High just as I was, hail a hansom opposite Queen's, and drive furiously to the station in bare time to meet the 10.15 train. At all hazards, Ida Van Rensselaer must not go to the Randolph, and must be carried off to Annie's, whether she would or not. On the way down I had time to arrange my plan of action; and before I reached the station, I thought I saw my way dimly out of the awful scrape which this mad Yankee girl had so inconsiderately got me into. I had met Ida Van Rensselaer the winter before at Nice. We stopped together at a pension on the Promenade des Anglais; and as I was away from Oxford--for even a Proctor must unbend sometimes--and as she was a pleasant, lively young person with remarkably fine eyes, travelling by herself, I had taken the trouble to instruct her in European scenery and European art. She had a fancy for being original, so I took her to see Eza, and Roccabrunna, and St. Pons, and all the other queer picturesque little places in the Nice district which no American had ever dreamt of going to see before: and when Ida went on to Florence, I happened--quite accidentally, of course--to turn up at the very same pension three days later, where I gave her further lessons in the art of admiring the early mediaeval masters and the other treasures of Giotto's city. I was a bit of a collector myself, and in my rooms at Magdalen I flatter myself that I have got the only one genuine Botticelli in a private collection in England. In spite of her untamed American savagery, Ida had a certain taste for these things, and evidently my lessons gave her the first glimpse she had ever had of that real interior Europe whose culture she had not previously suspected. It is pleasant to teach a pretty pupil, and in the impulse of a weak moment--it was in a gondola at Venice--I even told her that she should not leave for America without having seen Oxford. Of course I fancied that she would bring a chaperon. Now she had taken me at my word, but she had come alone. I had brought it all upon