At High Table in an Oxford college, the pretty young tutor Clare Bayes attracted all eyes, not least to her fetching decollettage. No one's eyes were sharper, however, than those of the visiting Spanish lecturer, invited as a guest on this occasion. Eventually the two young people were lovers, unbeknown to Clare's husband. And if the Spaniard was at pains to cover their tracks, his beloved left evidence of adultery with gay abandon - and all this in a university that was a forcing house of gossip and intrigue, a place where "at every word a reputation dies. "