There was little or no conversation in the four-wheeler that bore the Hooper party home. Mrs. Hooper and Alice were stiffly silent, while the Reader chaffed Constance a little about her successes of the evening. But he, too, was sleepy and tired, and the talk dropped. As they lighted their bedroom candles in the hall, Mrs. Hooper said to her niece, in her thin, high tone, mincing and coldly polite:

"I think it would have been better, Constance, if you had told us you knew Lord Glaramara. I don't wish to find fault, but such—such concealments—are really very awkward!"

Constance opened her eyes. She could have defended herself easily. She had no idea that her aunt was unaware of the old friendship between her parents and Lord Glaramara, who was no more interesting to her personally than many others of their Roman habitues, of whom the world was full. But she was too preoccupied to spend any but the shortest words on such a silly thing.

"I'm sorry, Aunt Ellen. I really didn't understand."

And she went up to bed, thinking only of Falloden; while Alice followed her, her small face pinched and weary, her girlish mind full of pain.



CHAPTER IV

On the day after the Vice-Chancellor's party, Falloden, after a somewhat slack morning's work, lunched in college with Meyrick. After hall, the quadrangle was filled with strolling men, hatless and smoking, discussing the chances of the Eights, the last debate at the Union, and the prospects of individual men in the schools.

Presently the sound of a piano was heard from the open windows of a room on the first floor.

"Great Scott!" said Falloden irritably to Meyrick, with whom he was walking arm in arm, "what a noise that fellow Radowitz makes! Why should we have to listen to him? He behaves as though the whole college belonged to him. We can't hear ourselves speak."

"Treat him like a barrel-organ and remove him!" said Meyrick, laughing. He was a light-hearted, easy-going youth, a "fresher" in his first summer term, devoted to Falloden, whose physical and intellectual powers seemed to him amazing.

"Bombard him first!" said Falloden. "Who's got some soda-water bottles?" And he beckoned imperiously to a neighbouring group of men,—"bloods"—always ready to follow him in a "rag," and heroes together with him of a couple of famous bonfires, in Falloden's first year.

They came up, eager for any mischief, the summer weather in their veins like wine. They stood round Falloden laughing and chaffing, till finally three of them disappeared at his bidding. They came rushing back, from various staircases, laden with soda-water bottles.

Then Falloden, with two henchmen, placed himself under Radowitz's windows, and summoned the offender in a stentorian voice:

"Radowitz! stop that noise!"

No answer—except that Radowitz in discoursing some "music of the future," and quite unaware of the shout from below, pounded and tormented the piano more than ever. The waves of crashing sound seemed to fill the quadrangle.

"We'll summon him thrice!" said Falloden. "Then—fire!"

But Radowitz remained deaf, and the assailant below gave the order. Three strong right arms below discharged three soda-water bottles, which went through the open window.

"My goody!" said Meyrick, "I hope he's well out of the way!" There was a sound of breaking glass. Then Radowitz, furious, appeared at his window, his golden hair more halolike than ever in the bright sun.

"What are you doing, you idiots?"

"Stop that noise, Radowitz!" shouted Falloden. "It annoys us!"

"Can't help it. It pleases me," said Radowitz shortly, proceeding to close the window. But he had scarcely done so, when Falloden launched another bottle, which went smash through the window and broke it. The glass fell out into the quadrangle, raising all the echoes. The rioters below held their laughing breaths.

"I say, what about the dons?" said one.

"Keep a lookout!" said another.

But meanwhile Radowitz had thrown up the injured window, and crimson with rage he leaned far out and flung half a broken bottle at the group below. All heads ducked, but the ragged missile only just missed Meyrick's curly poll.

"Not pretty that!—not pretty at all!" said Falloden coolly. "Might really have done some mischief. We'll avenge you, Meyrick. Follow me, you fellows!"

And in one solid phalanx, they charged, six or seven strong, up Radowitz's staircase. But he was ready for them. The oak was sported, and they could hear him dragging some heavy chairs against it. Meanwhile, from the watchers left in the quad, came a loud cough.

"Dons!—by Jove! Scatter!" And they rushed further up the staircase, taking refuge in the rooms of two of the "raggers." The lookout in the quadrangle turned to walk quietly towards the porter's lodge. The Senior Tutor—a spare tall man with a Jove-like brow—emerged from the library, and stood on the steps surveying the broken glass.

"All run to cover, of course!" was his reflection, half scornful, half disgusted. "But I am certain I heard Falloden's voice. What a puppy stage it is! They would be much better employed worrying old boots!"

But philosopher or no, he got no clue. The quadrangle was absolutely quiet and deserted, save for the cheeping of the swallows flitting across it, and the whistling of a lad in the porter's lodge. The Senior Tutor returned to the library, where he was unpacking a box of new books.

The rioters emerged at discreet intervals, and rejoined each other in the broad street outside the college.

"Vengeance is still due!"—said Falloden, towering among them, always with the faithful and grinning Meyrick at his side—"and we will repay. But now, to our tents! Ta, ta!" And dismissing them all, including Meyrick, he walked off alone in the direction of Holywell. He was going to look out a horse for Constance Bledlow.

As he walked, he said to himself that he was heartily sick of this Oxford life, ragging and all. It was a good thing it was so nearly done. He meant to get his First, because he didn't choose, having wasted so much time over it, not to get it. But it wouldn't give him any particular pleasure to get it. The only thing that really mattered was that Constance Bledlow was in Oxford, and that when his schools were over, he would have nothing to do but to stay on two or three weeks and force the running with her. He felt himself immeasurably older than his companions with whom he had just been rioting. His mind was set upon a man's interests and aims—marriage, travel, Parliament; they were still boys, without a mind among them. None the less, there was an underplot running through his consciousness all the time as to how best to punish Radowitz—both for his throw, and his impertinence in monopolising a certain lady for at least a quarter of an hour on the preceding evening.

At the well-known livery-stables in Holywell, he found a certain animation. Horses were in demand, as there were manoeuvres going on in Blenheim Park, and the minds of both dons and undergraduates were drawn thither. But Falloden succeeded in getting hold of the manager and absorbing his services at once.

"Show you something really good, fit for a lady?"

The manager took him through the stables, and Falloden in the end picked out precisely the beautiful brown mare of which he had spoken to Constance.

"Nobody else is to ride her, please, till the lady I am acting for has tried her," he said peremptorily to Fox. "I shall try her myself to-morrow. And what about a groom?—a decent fellow, mind, with a decent livery."

He saw a possible man and another horse, reserving both provisionally. Then he walked hurriedly to his lodgings to see if by any chance there were a note for him there. He had wired to his mother the day before, telling her to write to Constance Bledlow and Mrs. Hooper by the evening's post, suggesting that, on Thursday before the Eights, Lady Laura should pick her up at Medburn House, take her to tea at Falloden's lodgings and then on to the Eights. Lady Laura was to ask for an answer addressed to the lodgings.

He found one—a little note with a crest and monogram he knew well.

Medburn House.

"Dear Mr. Falloden,—I am very sorry I can not come to tea to-morrow. But my aunt and cousins seem to have made an engagement for me. No doubt I shall see Lady Laura at the boats. My aunt thanks her for her kind letter.

"Yours very truly,

"Constance Bledlow."

Falloden bit his lip. He had reckoned on an acceptance, having done everything that had been prescribed to him; and he felt injured. He walked on, fuming and meditating, to Vincent's Club, and wrote a reply.

"DEAR LADY CONSTANCE,—A thousand regrets! I hope for better luck next time. Meanwhile, as you say, we shall meet to-morrow at the Eights. I have spent much time to-day in trying to find you a horse, as we agreed. The mare I told you of is really a beauty. I am going to try her to-morrow, and will report when we meet. I admire your nepticular (I believe neptis is the Latin for niece) docility!

"Yours sincerely,

"DOUGLAS FALLODEN."

"Will that offend her?" he thought. "But a pin-prick is owed. I was distinctly given to understand that if the proprieties were observed, she would come."

In reality, however, he was stimulated by her refusal, as he was by all forms of conflict, which, for him, made the zest of life.

He shut himself up that evening and the following morning with his Greats work. Then he and Meyrick rushed up to the racket courts in the Parks for an hour's hard exercise, after which, in the highest physical spirits, a splendid figure in his white flannels, with the dark blue cap and sash of the Harrow Eleven—(he had quarrelled with the captain of the Varsity Eleven very early in his Oxford career, and by an heroic sacrifice to what he conceived to be his dignity had refused to let himself be tried for it)—he went off to meet his mother and sister at the railway station.

It was, of course, extremely inconsiderate of his mother to be coming at all in these critical weeks before the schools. She ought to have kept away. And yet he would be very glad to see her—and Nelly. He was fond of his home people, and they of him. They were his belongings—and they were Fallodens. Therefore his strong family pride accepted them, and made the most of them.

But his countenance fell when, as the train slowed into the railway station, he perceived beckoning to him from the windows, not two Fallodens, but four!

"What has mother been about?" He stood aghast. For there were not only Lady Laura and Nelly, but Trix, a child of eleven, and Roger, the Winchester boy of fourteen, who was still at home after an attack of measles.

They beamed at him as they descended. The children were quite aware they were superfluous, and fell upon him with glee.

"You don't want us, Duggy, we know! But we made mother bring us."

"Mother, really you ought to have given me notice!" said her reproachful son. "What am I to do with these brats?"

But the brats hung upon him, and his mother, "fat, fair and forty," smiled propitiatingly.

"Oh, my dear Duggy, never mind. They amuse themselves. They've promised to be good. And they get into mischief in London, directly my back's turned. How nice you look in flannels, dear! Are you going to row this afternoon?"

"Well, considering you know that my schools are coming on in a fortnight—" said Falloden, exasperated.

"It's so annoying of them!" said Lady Laura, sighing. "I wanted to bring Nelly up for two or three weeks. We could have got a house. But your father wouldn't hear of it."

"I should rather think not! Mother, do you want me to get a decent degree, or do you not?"

"But of course you're sure to," said Lady Laura with provoking optimism, hanging on his arm. "And now give us some tea, for we're all ravenous! And what about that girl, Lady Constance?"

"She can't come. Her aunt has made another engagement for her. You'll meet her at the boats."

Lady Laura looked relieved.

"Well then, we can go straight to our tea. But of course I wrote. I always do what you tell me, Duggy. Come along, children!"

"Trix and I got a packet of Banbury cakes at Didcot," reported Roger, in triumph, showing a greasy paper. "But we've eat 'em all."

"Little pigs!" said Falloden, surveying them. "And now I suppose you're going to gorge again?"

"We shall disgrace you!" shouted both the children joyously—"we knew we should!"

But Falloden hunted them all into a capacious fly, and they drove off to Marmion, where a room had been borrowed for the tea-party. Falloden sat on the box with folded arms and a sombre countenance. Why on earth had his mother brought the children? It was revolting to have to appear on the barge with such a troop. And all his time would be taken up with looking after them—time which he wanted for quite other things.

However, he was in for it. At Marmion he led the party through two quads and innumerable passages, till he pointed to a dark staircase up which they climbed, each member of the family—except the guide—talking at the top of their voices. On the third floor, Falloden paused and herded them into the room of a shy second-year man, very glad to do such a "blood" as Falloden a kindness, and help entertain his relations.

"Well, thank God, I've got you in!" said Falloden gloomily, as he shut the door behind the last of them.

* * * * *

"How Duggy does hustle us! I've had nothing of a tea!" said Roger, looking resentfully, his mouth full of cake, at his elder brother, who was already beginning to take out his watch, to bid his mother and sisters resume their discarded jackets, and to send a scout for a four-wheeler.

But Falloden was inexorable. He tore his sister Nelly, a soft fluffy creature of seventeen, away from the shy attentions of the second-year man, scoffed in disgust at Trix's desire for chocolates after a Gargantuan meal, and declared that they would all be late for the Eights, if any more gorging was allowed. His mother rose obediently. To be seen with such a son in the crowded Oxford streets filled her with pride. She could have walked beside him for hours.

At the college gate, Trix pinched her brother's arm.

"Well, Duggy, say it!"

"Say what, you little scug?"

"'Thank God, I've got you out!'" laughed the child, laying her cheek against his coat-sleeve. "That's what you're thinking. You know you are. I say, Duggy, you do look jolly in those colours!"

"Don't talk rot!" grumbled Falloden, but he winked at her in brotherly fashion, and Trix was more than happy. Like her mother, she believed that Douglas was simply the handsomest and cleverest fellow in the world. When he scolded it was better than other people's praise, and when he gave you a real private wink, it raised a sister to the skies. On such soil does male arrogance grow!

Soon they were in the stream of people crossing Christ Church river on their way to the boats. The May sunshine lay broad on the buttercup meadows, on the Christ Church elms, on the severe and blackened front of Corpus, on the long gabled line of Merton. The river glittered in the distance, and towards it the crowd of its worshippers—young girls in white, young men in flannels, elderly fathers and mothers from a distance, and young fathers and mothers from the rising tutorial homes of Oxford—made their merry way. Falloden looked in all directions for the Hooper party. A new anxiety and eagerness were stirring in him which he resented, which he tried to put down. He did not wish, he did not intend, if he could help it, to be too much in love with anybody. He was jealous of his own self-control, and intensely proud of his own strength of will, as he might have been of a musical or artistic gift. It was his particular gift, and he would not have it weakened. He had seen men do the most idiotic things for love. He did not intend to do such things. Love should be strictly subordinate to a man's career; women should be subordinate.

At the same time, from the second week of their acquaintance on the Riviera, he had wished to marry Constance Bledlow. He had proposed to her, only to be promptly refused, and on one mad afternoon, in the woods of the Esterels, he had snatched a kiss. What an amazing fuss she made about that kiss! He thought she would have cut him for ever. It was with the greatest difficulty, and only after a grovelling apology, that he had succeeded in making his peace. Yet all through the days of her wrath he had been quite certain that he would in the end appease her; which meant a triumphant confidence on his part that to a degree she did not herself admit or understand, he had captured her. Her resolute refusal to correspond with him, even after they had made it up and he was on the point of returning to Oxford, had piqued him indeed. But he was aware that she was due at Oxford, as her uncle's ward, some time in May; and meanwhile he had coolly impressed upon himself that in the interests of his work, it was infinitely better he should be without the excitement of her letters. By the time she arrived, he would have got through the rereading of his principal books, which a man must do in the last term before the schools, and could begin to "slack." And after the schools, he could devote himself.

But now that they had met again, he was aware of doubts and difficulties that had not yet assailed him. That she was not indifferent to him—that his presence still played upon her nerves and senses—so much he had verified. But during their conversation at the Vice-Chancellor's party he had become aware of something hard and resistant in her—in her whole attitude towards him—which had considerably astonished him. His arrogant self-confidence had reckoned upon the effect of absence, as making her softer and more yielding when they met again. The reverse seemed to be the case, and he pondered it with irritation....

"Oh, Duggy, isn't it ripping?" cried Trix, leaping and sidling at his elbow like a young colt.

For they had reached the river, which lay a vivid blue, flashing under the afternoon sun and the fleecy clouds. Along it lay the barges, a curving many-tinted line, their tall flag-staffs flying the colours of the colleges to which they belonged, their decks crowded with spectators. Innumerable punts were crossing and recrossing the river—the towing-path opposite was alive with men. Everything danced and glittered, the white reflections in the river, the sun upon the oars, the row of extravagantly green poplars on the further bank. How strong and lusty was the May light!—the yellow green of the elms—the gold of the buttercupped meadow! Only the dying moon in the high blue suggested a different note; as of another world hidden behind the visible world, waiting patiently, mysteriously, to take its place—to see it fade.

"Oh, Duggy, there's somebody waving to you. Oh, it's Lord Meyrick. And who's that girl with him? She's bowing to you, too. She's got an awfully lovely frock! Oh, Duggy, do look at her!"

Falloden had long since looked at her. He turned carelessly to his mother. "There's Meyrick, mother, on that barge in front. You know you're dining with him to-night in Christ Church. And that's Constance Bledlow beside him, to whom I asked you to write."

"Oh, is it? A good-looking girl," said his mother approvingly. "And who is that man beside her, with the extraordinary hair? He looks like somebody in Lohengrin."

Falloden laughed, but not agreeably.

"You've about hit it! He's a Marmion man. A silly, affected creature—half a Pole. His music is an infernal nuisance in college. We shall suppress it and him some day."

"What barge is it, Duggy? Are we going there?"

Falloden replied impatiently that the barge they were nearing belonged to Christ Church, and they were bound for the Marmion barge, much further along.

Meanwhile he asked himself what could have taken the Hooper party to the Christ Church barge? Ewen Hooper was a Llandaff man, and Llandaff, a small and insignificant college, shared a barge with another small college some distance down the river.

As they approached the barge he saw that while Constance had Radowitz on her right, Sorell of St. Cyprian's stood on the other side of her. Ah, no doubt, that accounted for it. Sorell had been originally at "the House," was still a lecturer there, and very popular. He had probably invited the Hoopers with their niece. It was, of course, the best barge in the best position. Falloden remembered how at the Vice-Chancellor's party Sorell had hovered about Constance, assuming a kind of mild guardianship; until he himself had carried her off. Why? What on earth had she to do with Sorell? Well, he must find out. Meanwhile, she clearly did not intend to take any further notice of his neighbourhood. Sorell and Radowitz absorbed her. They were evidently explaining the races to her, and she stood between them, a docile and charming vision, turning her graceful head from side to side. Falloden and his party crossed her actual line of sight. But she took no further notice; and he heard her laugh at something Radowitz was saying.

"Oh, Mr. Falloden, is that you—and Lady Laura! This is a pleasure!"

He turned to see a lady whom he cordially detested—a head's wife, who happened to be an "Honourable," the daughter of a small peer, and terribly conscious of the fact. She might have reigned in Oxford; she preferred to be a much snubbed dependent of London, and the smart people whose invitations she took such infinite trouble to get. For she was possessed of two daughters, tall and handsome girls, who were an obsession to her, an irritation to other people, and a cause of blushing to themselves. Her instinct for all men of family or title to be found among the undergraduates was amazingly extensive and acute; and she had paid much court to Falloden, as the prospective heir to a marquisate. He had hitherto treated her with scant attention, but she was not easily abashed, and she fastened at once on Lady Laura, whom she had seen once at a London ball.

"Where are you going, Lady Laura? To Marmion? Oh, no! Come on to our barge, you will see so much better, and save yourself another dusty bit of walk. Here we are!"

And she waved her parasol gaily towards a barge immediately ahead, belonging to one of the more important colleges. Lady Laura looked doubtfully at her son.

Falloden suddenly accepted, and with the utmost cordiality.

"That's really very good of you, Mrs. Manson! I shall certainly advise my mother to take advantage of your kind offer. But you can't do with all of us!" He pointed smiling to Trix and Roger.

"Of course I can! The more the merrier!" And the lively lady stooped, laid an affectionate hand on Roger's shoulder, and said in a stage aside—"Our ices are very good!"

Roger hastily retreated.

* * * * *

The starting-gun had boomed—communicating the usual thrill and sudden ripple of talk through the crowded barges.

"Now they're off!"

Lady Laura, Nelly, and "the babes" hung over the railing of the barge, looking excitedly for the first nose of a boat coming round the bend. Falloden, between the two fair-haired Miss Mansons, manoeuvred them and himself into a position at the rear where he could both see and be seen by the party on the Christ Church barge, amid which a certain large white hat with waving feathers shone conspicuous. The two girls between whom he stood, who had never found him in the least accessible before, were proud to be seen with him, and delighted to try their smiles on him. They knew he was soon going down, and they had visions of dancing with him in London, of finding an acquaintance, perhaps even a friend, at last, in those chilly London drawing-rooms, before which, if their mother knew no such weakness, they often shivered.

Falloden looked down upon them with a half sarcastic, half benignant patronage, and made himself quite agreeable. From the barge next door, indeed, the Manson and Falloden parties appeared to be on the most intimate terms. Mrs. Manson, doing the honours of the college boat, flattering Lady Laura, gracious to the children, and glancing every now and then at her two girls and their handsome companion, was enjoying a crowded and successful moment.

But she too was aware of the tall girl in white on the neighbouring deck, and she turned enquiringly to Falloden.

"Do you know who she is?"

"The Risboroughs' daughter—Lady Constance Bledlow." Mrs. Manson's eyebrows went up.

"Indeed! Of course I knew her parents intimately! Where is she staying?"

Falloden briefly explained.

"But how very interesting! I must call upon her at once. But—I scarcely know the Hoopers!"

Falloden hung over the barge rail, and smiled unseen.

"Here they come!—here they come!" shouted the children, laying violent hands on Falloden that he might identify the boats for them.

Up rolled a mighty roar from the lower reaches of the river as the boats came in sight, "Univ" leading; and the crowd of running and shouting men came rushing along the towing-path. "Univ" was gallantly "bumped" in front of its own barge, and Magdalen went head of the river. A delirious twenty minutes followed. Bump crashed on bump. The river in all its visible length flashed with the rising and falling oars—the white bodies of the rowers strained back and forth. But it was soon over, and only the cheering for the victorious crews remained; and the ices—served to the visitors!—of which Roger was not slow to remind his hostess.

The barges emptied, and the crowd poured out again into the meadows. Just outside the Christ Church barge, Constance with Nora beside her, and escorted by Sorell and Lord Meyrick, lifted a pair of eyes to a tall fellow in immaculate flannels and a Harrow cap. She had been aware of his neighbourhood, and he of hers, long before it was possible to speak. Falloden introduced his mother. Then he resolutely took possession of Constance.

"I hope you approve what I have been doing about the mare?"

"I am of course most grateful. When am I to try her?"

"I shall take her out to-morrow afternoon. Then I'll report."

"It is extremely kind of you." The tone was strictly conventional.

He said nothing; and after a minute she could not help looking up. She met an expression which showed a wounded gentleman beside her.

"I hope you saw the races well?" he said coldly.

"Excellently. And Mr. Sorell explained everything."

"You knew him before?"

"But of course!" she said, laughing. "I have known him for years."

"You never mentioned him—at Cannes."

"One does not always catalogue one's acquaintance, does one?"

"He seems to be more than an acquaintance."

"Oh, yes. He is a great friend. Mamma was so fond of him. He went with us to Sicily once. And Uncle Ewen likes him immensely."

"He is of course a paragon," said Falloden.

Constance glanced mockingly at her companion.

"I don't see why he should be called anything so disagreeable. All we knew of him was—that he was delightful! So learned—and simple—and modest—the dearest person to travel with! When he left us at Palermo, the whole party seemed to go flat."

"You pile it on!"

"Not at all. You asked me if he were more than an acquaintance. I am giving you the facts."

"I don't enjoy them!" said Falloden abruptly.

She burst into her soft laugh.

"I'm so sorry. But I really can't alter them. Where has my party gone to?"

She looked ahead, and saw that by a little judicious holding back Falloden had dexterously isolated her both from his own group and hers. Mrs. Manson and Lady Laura were far ahead in the wide, moving crowd that filled the new-made walk across the Christ Church meadow; so were the Hoopers and the slender figure and dark head of Alexander Sorell.

"Don't distress yourself, please. We shall catch them up before we get to Merton Street. And this only pays the very smallest fraction of your debt! I understood that if my mother wrote—"

She coloured brightly.

"I didn't promise!" she said hastily. "And I found the Hoopers were counting on me."

"No doubt. Oh, I don't grumble. But when friends—suppose we take the old path under the wall? It is much less crowded."

And before she knew where she was, she had been whisked out of the stream of visitors and undergraduates, and found herself walking almost in solitude in the shadow of one of the oldest walls in Oxford, the Cathedral towering overhead, the crowd moving at some distance on their right.

"That's better," said Falloden coolly. "May I go on? I was saying that when one friend disappoints another—bitterly!—there is such a thing as making up!"

There were beautiful notes in Falloden's deep voice, when he chose to employ them. He employed them now, and the old thrill of something that was at once delight and fear ran through Constance. But she looked him in the face, apparently quite unmoved.

"Now it is you who are piling it on! You will use such tragic expressions for the most trivial things. Of course, I am sorry if—"

"Then make amends!"—he said quickly. "Promise me—if the mare turns out well—you will ride in Lathom Woods—on Saturday?"

His eyes shone upon her. The force of the man's personality seemed to envelope her, to beat down the resistance which, as soon as he was out of her sight, the wiser mind in her built up.

She hesitated—smiled. And again the smile—or was it the May sun and wind?—gave her that heightening, that touch of brilliance that a face so delicate must often miss.

Falloden's fastidious sense approved her wholly: the white dress; the hat that framed her brow; the slender gold chains which rose and fell on her gently rounded breast; her height and grace. Passion beat within him. He hung on her answer.

"Saturday—impossible! I am not free till Monday, at least. And what about the groom?" She looked up.

"I shall parade him to-morrow, livery, horse and all. I undertake he shall give satisfaction. The Lathom Woods just now are a dream!"

"It is all a dream!" she said, looking round her at the beauty of field and tree, of the May clouds, and the grey college walls—youth and youth's emotion speaking in the sudden softening of her eyes.

He saw—he felt her—yielding.

"You'll come?"

"I—I suppose I may as well ride in Lathom Woods as anywhere else. You have a key?"

"The groom will have it. I meet you there."

She flushed a bright pink.

"That might have been left vague!"

"How are you to find your way through those woods without a guide?" he protested.

She was silent a moment, then she said with decision:

"I must overtake my people."

"You shall. I want you to talk to my mother—and—you have still to introduce me to your aunt and cousins."

Mirth crept into her eyes. The process of taming him had begun.

* * * * *

Falloden on the way back to his lodgings handed over his family to the tender offices of Meyrick and a couple of other gilded youths, who had promised to look after them for the evening. They were to dine at the Randolph, and go to a college concert. Falloden washed his hands of them, and shut himself up for five or six hours' grind, broken only by a very hasty meal. The thought of Constance hovered about him—but his will banished it. Will and something else—those aptitudes of brain which determined his quick and serviceable intelligence.

When after his frugal dinner he gave himself in earnest to the article in a French magazine, on a new French philosopher, which had been recommended to him by his tutor as likely to be of use to him in his general philosophy paper, his mind soon took fire; Constance was forgotten, and he lost himself in the splendour shed by the original and creative thought of a great man, climbing, under his guidance, as the night wore on, from point to point, and height to height, amid the Oxford silence, broken only by the chiming bells, and a benighted footfall in the street outside, until he seemed to have reached the bounds of the phenomenal and to be close on that outer vastness whence stream the primal forces—Die Muetter—as Goethe called them—whose play is with the worlds.

Then by way of calming the brain before sleep, he fell upon some notes to be copied and revised, on the "Religious Aspects of Greek Drama," and finally amused himself with running through an ingenious "Memoria Technica" on the 6th Book of the Ethics which he had made for himself during the preceding winter.

Then work was done, and he threw it from him with the same energy as that wherewith he had banished the remembrance of Constance some hours before. Now he could walk his room in the May dawn, and think of her, and only of her. With all the activity of his quickened mental state, he threw himself into the future—their rides together—their meetings, few and measured till the schools were done—then!—all the hours of life, and a man's most obstinate effort, spent in the winning of her. He knew well that she would be difficult to win.

But he meant to win her—and before others could seriously approach her. He was already nervously jealous of Sorell—and contemptuously jealous of Radowitz. And if they could torment him so, what would it be when Constance passed into that larger world of society to which sooner or later she was bound? No, she was to be wooed and married now. The Falloden custom was to marry early—and a good custom too. His father would approve, and money from the estate would of course be forthcoming. Constance was on her father's side extremely well-born; the Hooper blood would soon be lost sight of in a Risborough and Falloden descent. She was sufficiently endowed; and she had all the grace of person and mind that a Falloden had a right to look for in his wife.

Marriage, then, in the autumn, when he would be twenty-four—two years of travel—then Parliament—

On this dream he fell asleep. A brisk wind sprang up with the sunrise, and rustled round his lightly-darkened room. One might have heard in it the low laughter of Fortune on the watch.



CHAPTER V

"You do have the oddest ways," said Nora, perched at the foot of her cousin's bed; "why do you stay in bed to breakfast?"

"Because I always have—and because it's the proper and reasonable thing to do," said Constance defiantly. "Your English custom of coming down at half past eight to eat poached eggs and bacon is perfectly detestable."

She waved her teaspoon in Nora's face, and Nora reflected—though her sunburnt countenance was still severe—that Connie was never so attractive as when, in the freshest of white dressing-gowns, propped among the lace and silk of her ridiculous pillows and bedspreads, she was toying with the coffee and roll which Annette brought her at eight o'clock, as she had been accustomed to bring it since Connie was a child. Mrs. Hooper had clearly expressed her disapproval of such habits, but neither Annette nor Connie had paid any attention. Annette had long since come to an understanding with the servants, and it was she who descended at half past seven, made the coffee herself, and brought up with it the nearest thing to the morning rolls of the Palazzo Barberini which Oxford could provide—with a copy of The Times specially ordered for Lady Constance. The household itself subsisted on a copy of the Morning Post, religiously reserved to Mrs. Hooper after Dr. Hooper had glanced through it—he, of course, saw The Times at the Union. But Connie regarded a newspaper at breakfast as a necessary part of life.

After her coffee, accordingly, she read The Times, and smoked a cigarette, proceedings which were a daily source of wonder to Nora and reprobation in the minds of Mrs. Hooper and Alice. Then she generally wrote her letters, and was downstairs after all by half past ten, dressed and ready for the day. Mrs. Hooper declared to Dr. Ewen that she would be ashamed for any of their Oxford friends to know that a niece of his kept such hours, and that it was a shocking example for the servants. But the maids took it with smiles, and were always ready to run up and down stairs for Lady Connie; while as for Oxford, the invitations which had descended upon the Hooper family, even during the few days since Connie's arrival, had given Aunt Ellen some feverish pleasure, but perhaps more annoyance. So far from Ewen's "position" being of any advantage to Connie, it was Connie who seemed likely to bring the Hoopers into circles of Oxford society where they had till now possessed but the slenderest footing. An invitation to dinner from the Provost of Winton and Mrs. Manson, to "Dr. and Mrs. Hooper, Miss Hooper and Lady Constance Bledlow," to meet an archbishop, had fairly taken Mrs. Hooper's breath away. But she declaimed to Alice none the less in private on the innate snobbishness of people.

Nora, however, wished to understand.

"I can't imagine why you should read The Times," she said with emphasis, as Connie pushed her tray away, and looked for her cigarettes. "What have you to do with politics?"

"Why, The Times is all about people I know!" said Connie, opening amused eyes. "Look there!" And she pointed to the newspaper lying open amid the general litter of her morning's post, and to a paragraph among the foreign telegrams describing the excitement in Rome over a change of Ministry. "Fall of the Italian Cabinet. The King sends for the Marchese Bardinelli."

"And there's a letter from Elisa Bardinelli, telling me all about it!" She tossed some closely-written sheets to Nora, who took them up doubtfully.

"It is in Italian!" she said, as though she resented the fact.

"Well, of course! Did you think it would be in Russian? You really ought to learn Italian, Nora. Shall I teach you?"

"Well—it might be useful for my Literature," said Nora slowly. "There are all those fellows Chaucer borrowed from—and then Shakespeare. I wouldn't mind."

"Thank you!" said Connie, laughing. "And then look at the French news. That's thrilling! Sir Wilfrid's going to throw up the Embassy and retire. I stayed with them a night in Paris on my way through—and they never breathed. But I thought something was up. Sir Wilfrid's a queer temper. I expect he's had a row with the Foreign Office. They were years in Rome, and of course we knew them awfully well. Mamma adored her!"

And leaning back with her hands behind her head, Connie's sparkling look subsided for a moment into a dreamy sweetness.

"I suppose you think Oxford a duck-pond after all that!" said Nora pugnaciously.

Constance laughed.

"Why, it's new. It's experience. It's all to the good."

"Oh, you needn't suppose I am apologising for Oxford!" cried Nora. "I think, of course, it's the most interesting place in the world. It's ideas that matter, and ideas come from the universities!" And the child-student of seventeen drew herself up proudly, as though she bore the honour of all academie on her sturdy shoulders.

Constance went into a fit of laughter.

"And I think they come from the people who do things, and not only from the people who read and write about them when they're done. But goodness—what does it matter where they come from? Go away, Nora, and let me dress!"

"There are several things I want to know," said Nora deliberately, not budging. "Where did you get to know Mr. Falloden?"

The colour ran up inconveniently in Connie's cheeks.

"I told you," she said impatiently. "No!—I suppose you weren't there. I met him on the Riviera. He came out for the Christmas holidays. He was in the villa next to us, and we saw him every day."

"How you must have hated him!" said Nora, with energy, her hands round her knees, her dark brows frowning.

Constance laughed again, but rather angrily.

"Why should I hate him, please? He's extraordinarily clever—"

"Yes, but such a snob!" said Nora, setting her white teeth. Connie sprang up in bed.

"Nora, really, the way you talk of other people's friends. You should learn—indeed, you should—not to say rude and provoking things!"

"Why should it provoke you? I'm certain you don't care for him—you can't!" cried Nora. "He's the most hectoring, overbearing creature! The way he took possession of you the other day at the boats! Of course he didn't care, if he made everybody talk about you!"

Constance turned a little white.

"Why should anybody talk?" she said coldly. "But really, Nora, I must turn you out. I shall ring for Annette." She raised herself in bed.

"No, no!" Nora caught her hand as it stretched out towards the bell. "Oh, Connie, you shall not fall in love with Mr. Falloden! I should go mad if you did."

"You are mad already," said Constance, half laughing, half furious. "I tell you Mr. Falloden is a friend of mine—as other people are. He is very good company, and I won't have him abused—for nothing. His manners are abominable. I have told him so dozens of times. All the same, he amuses me—and interests me—and you are not to talk about him, Nora, if you can't talk civilly."

And looking rather formidably great-ladyish, Constance threw severe glances at her cousin.

Nora stood up, first on one foot, then on the other. She was bursting with things to say, and could not find words to say them in. At last she broke out—

"I'm not abusing him for nothing! If you only knew the horrid, rude things—mean things too—at dances and parties—he does to some of the girls I know here; just because they're not swells and not rich, and he doesn't care what they think about him. That's what I call a snob—judging people by whether they're rich and important—by whether it's worth while to know them. Hateful!"

"You foolish child!" cried Connie. "He's so rich and important himself, what can it matter to him? You talk as though he were a hanger-on—as though he had anything to gain by making up to people. You are absurd!"

"Oh, no—I know he's not like Herbert Pryce," said Nora, panting, but undaunted. "There, that was disgusting of me!—don't remember that I ever said that, Connie!—I know Mr. Falloden needn't be a snob, because he's got everything that snobs want—and he's clever besides. But it is snobbish all the same to be so proud and stand-off, to like to make other people feel small and miserable, just that you may feel big."

"Go away!" said Constance, and taking up one of her pillows, she threw it neatly at Nora, who dodged it with equal skill. Nora retreated to the other side of the door, then quickly put her head through again.

"Connie!—don't!"

"Go away!" repeated Connie, smiling, but determined.

Nora looked at her appealingly, then shut her lips firmly, turned and went away. Connie spent a few minutes in meditation. She resented the kind of quasi-guardianship that this clever backfisch assumed towards her, though she knew it meant that Nora had fallen in love with her. But it was inconvenient to be so fallen in love with—if it was to mean interference with her private affairs.

"As if I couldn't protect myself!"

The mere thought of Douglas Falloden was agitating enough, without the consciousness that a pair of hostile eyes, so close to her, were on the watch.

She sprang up, and went through her dressing, thinking all the time. "What do I really feel about him? I am going to ride with him on Monday—without telling anybody; I vowed I would never put myself in his power again. And I am deliberately doing it. I am in my guardian's house, and I am treating Uncle Ewen vilely."

And why?—why these lapses from good manners and good feeling? Was she after all in love with him? If he asked her to marry him again, as he had asked her to marry him before, would she now say yes, instead of no? Not at all! She was further—she declared—from saying yes now, than she had been under his first vehement attack. And yet she was quite determined to ride with him. The thought of their rides in the radiant Christmas sunshine at Cannes came back upon her with a rush. They had been one continuous excitement, simply because it was Falloden who rode beside her—Falloden, who after their merry dismounted lunch under the pines, had swung her to her saddle again—her little foot in his strong hand—so easily and powerfully. It was Falloden who, when she and two or three others of the party found themselves by mistake on a dangerous bridle-path, on the very edge of a steep ravine in the Esterels, and her horse had become suddenly restive, had thrown himself off his own mount, and passing between her horse and the precipice, where any sudden movement of the frightened beast would have sent him to his death, had seized the bridle and led her into safety. And yet all the time, she had disliked him almost as much as she had been drawn to him. None of the many signs of his autocratic and imperious temper had escaped her, and the pride in her had clashed against the pride in him. To flirt with him was one thing. The cloud of grief and illness, which had fallen so heavily on her youth, was just lifting under the natural influences of time at the moment when she and Falloden first came across each other. It was a moment for her of strong reaction, of a welling-up and welling-back of life, after a kind of suspension. The strong young, fellow, with his good looks, his masterful ways, and his ability—in spite of the barely disguised audacity which seemed inseparable from the homage it pleased him to pay to women—had made a deep and thrilling impression upon her youth and sex.

And yet she had never hesitated when he had asked her to marry him. Ride with him—laugh with him—quarrel with him, yes!—marry him, no! Something very deep in her recoiled. She refused him, and then had lain awake most of the night thinking of her mother and feeling ecstatically sure, while the tears came raining, that the dear ghost approved that part of the business at least, if no other.

And how could there be any compunction about it? Douglas Falloden, with his egotism, his pride in himself, his family, his wits, his boundless confidence in his own brilliant future, was surely fair game. Such men do not break their hearts for love. She had refused his request that he might write to her without a qualm; and mostly because she imagined so vividly what would have been his look of triumph had she granted it. Then she had spent the rest of the winter and early spring in thinking about him. And now she was going to do this reckless thing, out of sheer wilfulness, sheer thirst for adventure. She had always been a spoilt child, brought up with boundless indulgence, and accustomed to all the excitements of life. It looked as though Douglas Falloden were to be her excitement in Oxford. Girls like the two Miss Mansons might take possession of him in public, so long as she commanded those undiscovered rides and talks which revealed the real man. At the same time, he should never be able to feel secure that she would do his bidding, or keep appointments. As soon as Lady Laura's civil note arrived, she was determined to refuse it. He had counted on her coming; therefore she would not go. Her first move had been a deliberate check; her second should be a concession. In any case she would keep the upper hand.

Nevertheless there was an inner voice which mocked, through all the patting and curling and rolling applied by Annette's skilled hands to her mistress's brown hair. Had not Falloden himself arranged this whole adventure ahead?—found her a horse and groom, while she was still in the stage of thinking about them, and settled the place of rendezvous?

She could not deny it; but her obstinate confidence in her own powers and will was not thereby in the least affected. She was going because it amused her to go; not because he prescribed it.

The following day, Saturday, witnessed an unexpected stream of callers on Mrs. Hooper. She was supposed to be at home on Saturday afternoons to undergraduates; but the undergraduates who came were few and shy. They called out of respect for the Reader, whose lectures they attended and admired. But they seldom came a second time; for although Alice had her following of young men, it was more amusing to meet her anywhere else than under the eyes of her small, peevish mother, who seemed to be able to talk of nothing else than ailments and tabloids, and whether the Bath or the Buxton waters were the better for her own kind of rheumatism.

On this afternoon, however, the Hoopers' little drawing-room and the lawn outside were crowded with folk. Alexander Sorell arrived early, and found Constance in a white dress strolling up and down the lawn under a scarlet parasol and surrounded by a group of men with whom she had made acquaintance on the Christ Church barge. She received him with a pleasure, an effusion, which made a modest man blush.

"This is nice of you!—I wondered whether you'd come!"

"I thought you'd seen too much of me this week already!" he said, smiling—"but I wanted to arrange with you when I might take you to call on the Master of Beaumont. To-morrow?"

"I shall be plucked, you'll see! You'll be ashamed of me."

"I'll take my chance. To-morrow then, at four o'clock before chapel?"

Constance nodded—"Delighted!"—and was then torn from him by her uncle, who had fresh comers to introduce to her. But Sorell was quite content to watch her from a distance, or to sit talking in a corner with Nora, whom he regarded as a child,—"a jolly, clever, little thing!"—while his mind was full of Constance.

The mere sight of her—the slim willowy creature, with her distinguished head and her beautiful eyes—revived in him the memory of some of his happiest and most sacred hours. It was her mother who had produced upon his own early maturity one of those critical impressions, for good or evil, which men so sensitive and finely strung owe to women. The tenderness, the sympathy, the womanly insight of Ella Risborough had drawn him out of one of those fits of bitter despondency which are so apt to beset the scholar just emerging, strained and temporarily injured, from the first contests of life.

He had done brilliantly at Oxford—more than brilliantly—and he had paid for overwork by a long break-down. After getting his fellowship he had been ordered abroad for rest and travel. There was nobody to help him, nobody to think for him. His father and mother were dead; and of near relations he had only a brother, established in business at Liverpool, with whom he had little or nothing in common. At Rome he had fallen in with the Risboroughs, and had wandered with them during a whole spring through enchanted land of Sicily, where it gradually became bearable again to think of the too-many things he knew, and to apply them to his own pleasure and that of his companions. Ella Risborough was then forty-two, seventeen years older than himself, and her only daughter was a child of sixteen. He had loved them all—father, mother, and child—with the adoring gratitude of one physically and morally orphaned, to whom a new home and family has been temporarily given. For Ella and her husband had taken a warm affection to the refined and modest fellow, and could not do enough for him. His fellowship, and some small savings, gave him all the money he wanted, but he was starved of everything else that Man's kindred can generally provide—sympathy, and understanding without words, and the little gaieties and kindnesses of every day. These the Risboroughs offered him without stint, and rejoiced to see him taking hold on life again under the sunshine they made for him. After six months he was quite restored to health, and he went back to Oxford to devote himself to his college work.

Twice afterwards he had gone to Rome on short visits to see the Risboroughs. Then had come the crash of Lady Risborough's sudden death followed by that of her husband. The bitterness of Sorell's grief was increased by the fact that he saw no means, at that time, of continuing his friendship with their orphan child. Indeed his fastidious and scrupulous temperament forbade him any claim of the kind. He shrank from being misunderstood. Constance, in the hands of Colonel King and his wife, was well cared for, and the shrewd and rather suspicious soldier would certainly have looked askance on the devotion of a man around thirty, without fortune or family, to a creature so attractive and so desirable as Constance Bledlow.

So he had held aloof, and as Constance resentfully remembered she had received but two letters from him since her father's death. Ewen Hooper, with whom he had an academic rather than a social acquaintance, had kept him generally informed about her, and he knew that she was expected in Oxford. But again he did not mean to put himself forward, or to remind her unnecessarily of his friendship with her parents. At the Vice-Chancellor's party, indeed, an old habit of looking after her had seized him again, and he had not been able to resist it. But it was her long disappearance with Falloden, her heightened colour, and preoccupied manner when they parted at the college gate, together with the incident at the boat-races of which he had been a witness, which had suddenly developed a new and fighting resolve in him. If there was one type in Oxford he feared and detested more than another it was the Falloden type. To him, a Hellene in temper and soul—if to be a Hellene means gentleness, reasonableness, lucidity, the absence of all selfish pretensions—men like Falloden were the true barbarians of the day, and the more able the more barbarian.

Thus, against his own will and foresight, he was on the way to become a frequenter of the Hoopers' house. He had called on Wednesday, taken the whole party to the boats on Thursday, and given them supper afterwards in his rooms. They had all met again at the boats on Friday, and here he was on Saturday, that he might make plans with Constance for Sunday and for several other days ahead. He was well aware that things could not go on at that pace; but he was determined to grasp the situation, and gauge the girl's character, if he could.



He saw plainly that her presence at the Hoopers was going to transform the household in various unexpected ways. On this Saturday afternoon Mrs. Hooper's stock of teacups entirely ran out; so did her garden chairs. Mrs. Manson called—and Lord Meyrick, under the wing of a young fellow of All Souls, smooth-faced and slim, one of the "mighty men" of the day, just taking wing for the bar and Parliament. Falloden, he understood, had put in an appearance earlier in the afternoon; Herbert Pryce, and Bobbie Vernon of Magdalen, a Blue of the first eminence, skirmished round and round the newcomer, taking possession of her when they could. Mrs. Hooper, under the influence of so much social success, showed a red and flustered countenance, and her lace cap went awry. Alice helped her mother in the distribution of tea, but was curiously silent and self-effaced. It was dismally true that the men who usually paid attention to her were now entirely occupied with Constance. Bobbie Vernon, who was artistic, was holding an ardent though intermittent discussion with Constance on the merits of old pictures and new. Pryce occasionally took part in it, but only, as Sorell soon perceived, for the sake of diverting a few of Connie's looks and gestures, a sally or a smile, now and then to himself.

In the middle of it she turned abruptly towards Sorell. Her eyes beckoned, and he carried her off to the further end of the garden, where they were momentarily alone. There she fell upon him.

"Why did you never write to me all last winter?"

He could not help a slight flush.

"You had so many friends without me," he said, stammeringly, at last.

"One hasn't so many old friends." The voice was reproachful. "I thought you must be offended with me."

"How could I be!"

"And you call me Lady Constance," she went on indignantly. "When did you ever do such a thing in Rome, or when we were travelling?"

His look betrayed his feeling.

"Ah, but you were a little girl then, and now—"

"Now"—she said impatiently—"I am just Constance Bledlow, as I was then—to you. But I don't give away my Christian name to everybody. I don't like, for instance, being forced to give it to Aunt Ellen!"

And she threw a half-laughing, half-imperious glance towards Mrs. Hooper in the distance.

Sorell smiled.

"I hope you're going to be happy here!" he said earnestly.

"I shall be happy enough—if I don't quarrel with Aunt Ellen!"

"Don't quarrel with anybody! Call me in, before you do. And do make friends with your uncle. He is delightful."

"Yes, but far too busy for the likes of me. Oh, I dare say I shall keep out of mischief."

But he thought he detected in her tone a restlessness, a forlornness, which pained him.

"Why not take up some study—some occupation? Learn something—go in for Honours!" he said, laughing.

She laughed too, but with a very decided shake of the head. Then she turned upon him suddenly.

"But there is something I should like to learn! Papa began to teach me. I should like to learn Greek."

"Bravo!" he said, with a throb of pleasure. "And take me for a teacher!"

"Do you really mean it?"

"Entirely." They strolled on, arranging times and seasons, Constance throwing herself into the scheme with a joyous and childlike zest.

"Mind you—I shall make you work!" he said firmly.

"Rather! May Nora come too?—if she wishes? I like Nora!"

"Does that mean—"

"Only that Alice doesn't like me!" she said with a frank smile. "But I agree—my uncle is a dear."

"And I hear you are going to ride?"

"Yes. Mr. Falloden has found me a horse and groom."

"When did you come to know Mr. Falloden? I don't remember anybody of that name at the Barberini."

She explained carelessly.

"You are going out alone?"

"In general. Sometimes, no doubt, I shall find a friend. I must ride!"—she shook her shoulders impatiently—"else I shall suffocate in this place. It's beautiful—Oxford!—but I don't understand it—it's not my friend yet. You remember that mare of mine in Rome—Angelica! I want a good gallop—God and the grass!"

She laughed and stretched her long and slender arms, clasping her hands above her head. He realised in her, with a disagreeable surprise, the note that was so unlike her mother—the note of recklessness, of vehement will. It was really ill-luck that some one else than Douglas Falloden could not have been found to look after her riding.

* * * * *

"I suppose you will be 'doing' the Eights all next week?" said Herbert Pryce to the eldest Miss Hooper.

Alice coldly replied that she supposed it was necessary to take Connie to all the festivities.

"What!—such a blase young woman! She seems to have been everywhere and seen everything already. She will be able to give you and Miss Nora all sorts of hints," said the mathematical tutor, with a touch of that patronage which was rarely absent from his manner to Alice Hooper. He was well aware of her interest in him, and flattered by it; but, to do him justice, he had not gone out of his way to encourage it. She had been all very well, with her pretty little French face, before this striking creature, her cousin, appeared on the scene. And now of course she was jealous—that was inevitable. But it was well girls should learn to measure themselves against others—should find their proper place.

All the same, he was quite fond of her, the small kittenish thing. An old friend of his, and of the Hoopers, had once described her as a girl "with a real talent for flirtation and an engaging penury of mind." Pryce thought the description good. She could be really engaging sometimes, when she was happy and amused, and properly dressed. But ever since the appearance of Constance Bledlow she seemed to have suffered eclipse; to have grown plain and dull.

He stayed talking to her, however, a little while, seeing that Constance Bledlow had gone indoors; and then he departed. Alice ran upstairs, locked her door, and stood looking at herself in the glass. She hated her dress, her hat, the way she had done her hair. The image of Constance in her white silk hat with its drooping feathers, her delicately embroidered dress and the necklace on her shapely throat, tormented her. She was sick with envy—and with fear. For months she had clung to the belief that Herbert Pryce would ask her to marry him. And now all expectation of the magic words was beginning to fade from her mind. In one short week, as it seemed to her, she had been utterly eclipsed and thrown aside. Bob Vernon too, whose fancy for her, as shown in various winter dances, had made her immensely proud, he being then in that momentary limelight which flashes on the Blue, as he passes over the Oxford scene—Vernon had scarcely had a word for her. She never knew that he cared about pictures! And there was Connie—knowing everything about pictures!—able to talk about everything! As she had listened to Connie's talk, she had felt fairly bewildered. Of course it was no credit to Connie to be able to rattle off all those names and things. It was because she had lived in Italy. And no doubt a great deal of it was showing off.

All the same, poor miserable Alice felt a bitter envy of Connie's opportunities.



CHAPTER VI

"My brother will be here directly. He wants to show you his special books," said Miss Wenlock shyly.

The Master's sister was a small and withered lady, who had been something of a beauty, and was now the pink of gentle and middle-aged decorum. She was one of those women it is so easy to ignore till you live with them. Then you perceive that in their relations to their own world, the world they make and govern, they are of the stuff which holds a country together, without which a country can not exist. She might have come out of a Dutch picture—a Terburg or a Metsu—so exquisite was she in every detail—her small, white head, her regular features, the lace coif tied under her chin, the ruffles at her wrist, the black brocade gown, which never altered in its fashion and which she herself cut out, year after year, for her maid to make,—the chatelaine of old Normandy silver, given her by her brother years before, which hung at her waist.

Opposite her sat a very different person, yet of a type no less profitable to this mixed life of ours. Mrs. Mulholland was the widow of a former scientific professor, of great fame in Oxford for his wit and Liberalism. Whenever there was a contest on between science and clericalism in the good old fighting days, Mulholland's ample figure might have been seen swaying along the road from the Parks to Convocation, his short-sighted eyes blinking at every one he passed, his fair hair and beard streaming in the wind, a flag of battle to his own side, and an omen of defeat to the enemy. His mots still circulated, and something of his gift for them had remained with the formidable woman who now represented him. At a time when short dresses for women were coming in universally, she always wore hers long and ample, though they were looped up by various economical and thrifty devices; on the top of the dress—which might have covered a crinoline, but didn't—a shawl, long after every one else had ceased to wear shawls; and above the shawl a hat, of the large mushroom type and indecipherable age. And in the midst of this antique and generally untidy gear, the youngest and liveliest face imaginable, under snow-white hair: black eyes full of Irish fun, a pugnacious and humorous mouth, and the general look of one so steeped in the rich, earthy stuff of life that she might have stepped out of a novel of Fielding's or a page of "Lavengro."

When Constance entered, Mrs. Mulholland turned round suddenly to look at her. It was a glance full of good will, but penetrating also, and critical. It was as though the person from whom it came had more than a mere stranger's interest in the tall young lady in white, now advancing towards Miss Wenlock.

But she gave no immediate sign of it. She and Miss Wenlock had been discussing an Oxford acquaintance, the newly-married wife of one of the high officials of the University. Miss Wenlock, always amiable, had discreetly pronounced her "charming."

"Oh, so dreadfully charming!" said Mrs. Mulholland with a shrug, "and so sentimental that she hardens every heart. Mine becomes stone when I talk to her. She cried when I went to tea with her—a wedding visit if you please! I think it was because one of the kangaroos at Blenheim had just died in childbirth. I told her it was a mercy, considering that any of them would hug us to death if they got a chance. Are you a sentimentalist, Lady Constance?" Mrs. Mulholland turned gaily to the girl beside her, but still with the same touch of something coolly observant in her manner.

Constance laughed.

"I never can cry when I ought to," she said lightly.

"Then you should go to tea with Mrs. Crabbett. She could train anybody to cry—in time. She cultivates with care, and waters with tears, every sorrow that blows! Most of us run away from our troubles, don't we?"

Constance again smiled assent. But suddenly her face stiffened. It was like a flower closing, or a light blown out.

Mrs. Mulholland thought—"She has lost a father and a mother within a year, and I have reminded her. I am a cruel, clumsy wretch."

And thenceforward she roared so gently that Miss Wenlock, who never said a malicious thing herself, and was therefore entirely dependent on Sarah Mulholland's tongue for the salt of life, felt herself cheated of her usual Sunday entertainment. For there were few Sundays in term-time when Mrs. Mulholland did not "drop in" for tea and talk at Beaumont before going on to the Cathedral service.

But under the gentleness, Constance opened again, and expanded. Mrs. Mulholland seemed to watch her with increasing kindness. At last, she said abruptly—

"I have already heard of you from two charming young men."

Constance opened a pair of conscious eyes. It was as though she were always expecting to hear Falloden's name, and protecting herself against the shock of it. But the mistake was soon evident.

"Otto Radowitz told me you had been so kind to him! He is an enthusiastic boy, and a great friend of mine. He deals always in superlatives. That is so refreshing here in Oxford where we are all so clever that we are deadly afraid of each other, and everybody talks drab. And his music is divine! I hear they talk of him in Paris as another Chopin. He passed his first degree examination the other day magnificently! Come and hear him some evening at my house. Jim Meyrick, too, has told me all about you. His mother is a cousin of mine, and he condescends occasionally to come and see me. He is, I understand, a 'blood.' All I know is that he would be a nice youth, if he had a little more will of his own, and had nicer friends!" The small black eyes under the white hair flamed.

Constance started. Miss Wenlock put up a soothing hand—

"Dear Sarah, are you thinking of any one?"

"Of course I am!" said Mrs. Mulholland firmly. "There is a young gentleman at Marmion who thinks the world belongs to him. Oh, you know Mr. Falloden, Grace! He got the Newdigate last year, and the Greek Verse the other day. He got the Ireland, and he's going to get a First. He might have been in the Eleven, if he'd kept his temper, and they say he's going to be a magnificent tennis player. And a lot of other tiresome distinctions. I believe he speaks at the Union, and speaks well—bad luck to him!"

Constance laughed, fidgeted, and at last said, rather defiantly—

"It's sometimes a merit to be disliked, isn't it? It means that you're not exactly like other people. Aren't we all turned out by the gross!"

Mrs. Mulholland looked amused.

"Ah, but you see I know something about this young man at home. His mother doesn't count. She has her younger children, and they make her happy. And of course she is absurdly proud of Douglas. But the father and this son Douglas are of the same stuff. They have a deal more brains and education than their forbears ever wanted; but still, in soul, they remain our feudal lords and superiors, who have a right to the services of those beneath them. And everybody is beneath them—especially women; and foreigners—and artists—and people who don't shoot or hunt. Ask their neighbours—ask their cottagers. Whenever the revolution comes, their heads will be the first to go! At the same time they know—the clever ones—that they can't keep their place except by borrowing the weapons of the class they really fear—the professional class—the writers and thinkers—the lawyers and journalists. And so they take some trouble to sharpen their own brains. And the cleverer they are, the more tyrannous they are. And that, if you please, is Mr. Douglas Falloden!"

"I wonder why you are so angry with him, my dear Sarah," said Miss Wenlock mildly.

"Because he has been bullying my nice boy, Radowitz!" said Mrs. Mulholland vehemently. "I hear there has been a disgraceful amount of ragging in Marmion lately, and that Douglas Falloden—can you conceive it?—a man in his last term, whom the University imagines itself to be turning out as an educated specimen!—is one of the ring-leaders—the ring-leader. It appears that Otto wears a frilled dress shirt—why shouldn't he?—that, having been brought up in Paris till he was nineteen, he sometimes tucks his napkin under his chin—that he uses French words when he needn't—that he dances like a Frenchman—that he recites French poetry actually of his own making—that he plays too well for a gentleman—that he doesn't respect the customs of the college, et cetera. There is a sacred corner of the Junior Common Room, where no freshman is expected to sit after hall. Otto sat in it—quite innocently—knowing nothing—and, instead of apologising, made fun of Jim Meyrick and Douglas Falloden who turned him out. Then afterwards he composed a musical skit on 'the bloods,' which delighted every one in college, who wasn't a 'blood.' And now there is open war between him and them. Otto doesn't talk of it. I hear of it from other people. But he looks excited and pale—he is a very delicate creature!—and we, who are fond of him, live in dread of some violence. I never can understand why the dons are so indulgent to ragging. It is nothing but a continuation of school bullying. It ought to be put down with the strongest possible hand."

Miss Wenlock had listened in tremulous sympathy, nodding from time to time. Constance sat silent and rather pale—looting down. But her mind was angry. She said to herself that nobody ought to attack absent persons who can't defend themselves,—at least so violently. And as Mrs. Mulholland seemed to wait for some remark from her, she said at last, with a touch of impatience:

"I don't think Mr. Radowitz minds much. He came to us—to my uncle's—to play last night. He was as gay as possible."

"Radowitz would make jokes with the hangman!" said Mrs. Mulholland. "Ah, well, I think you know Douglas Falloden"—the tone was just lightly touched with significance—"and if you can lecture him—do!" Then she abruptly changed her subject:

"I suppose you have scarcely yet made acquaintance with your two aunts who live quite close to the Fallodens in Yorkshire?"

Constance looked up in astonishment.

"Do you know them?"

"Oh, quite well!" The strong wrinkled face flashed into laughter. But suddenly the speaker checked herself, and laid a worn hand gently on Constance's knee—"You won't mind if I tell you things?—you won't think me an impertinent old woman? I knew your father"—was there just an imperceptible pause on the words?—"when he was quite a boy; and my people were small squires under the shelter of the Risboroughs before your father sold the property and settled abroad. I was brought up with all your people—your Aunt Marcia, and your Aunt Winifred, and all the rest of them. I saw your mother once in Rome—and loved her, like everybody else. But—as probably you know—your Aunt Winifred—who was keeping house for your father—gathered up her silly skirts, and departed when your father announced his engagement. Then she and your Aunt Marcia settled together in an old prim Georgian house, about five miles from the Fallodens; and there they have been ever since. And now they are tremendously excited about you!"

"About me?" said Constance, astonished. "I don't know them. They never write to me. They never wrote to father!"

Mrs. Mulholland smiled.

"All the same you will have a letter from them soon. And of course you remember your father's married sister, Lady Langmoor?"

"No, I never even saw her. But she did sometimes write to father."

"Yes, she was not quite such a fool as the others. Well, she will certainly descend on you. She'll want you for some balls—for a drawing-room—and that kind of thing. I warn you!"

The girl's face showed her restive.

"Why should she want me?—when she never wanted me before—or any of us?"

"Ah, that's her affair! But it is your other aunts who delight me. Your Aunt Marcia, when I first knew her, was in an ascetic phase. People called it miserliness—but it wasn't; it was only a moral hatred of waste—in anything. We envied her abominably, when I was a girl in my early teens, much bothered with dressing, because she had invented a garment—the only one of any kind that she wore under her dress. She called it a 'Unipantaloonicoat'—you can imagine why! It included stockings. It was thin in summer and thick in winter. There was only one putting on—pouf!—and then the dress. I thought it a splendid idea, but my mother wouldn't let me copy it. Your Aunt Winifred had just the opposite mania—of piling on clothes—because she said there were 'always draughts.' If one petticoat fastened at the back, there must be another over that which fastened at the front—and another at the side—and so on, ad infinitum. But then, alack!—they suddenly dropped all their absurdities, and became quite ordinary people. Aunt Winifred took to religion; she befriends all the clergy for miles round. She is the mother of Mother Church. And Aunt Marcia, after having starved herself of clothes for years and collected nothing more agreeable than snails, now wears silks and satins, and gossips and goes out to tea, and collects blue china like anybody else. I connect it with the advent of a certain General who after all went off solitary to Malta, and died there. Poor Marcia! But you will certainly have to go and stay there."

"I don't know!" said Constance, her delicate mouth setting rather stiffly.

"Ah, well—they are getting old!"

Mrs. Mulholland's tone had softened again, and when it softened there was a wonderful kindness in it.

A door opened suddenly. The Master came in, followed by Alexander Sorell.

"My dear Edward!" said Miss Wenlock, "how late you are!"

"I was caught by a bore, dear, after chapel. Horace couldn't get rid of his, and I couldn't get rid of mine. But now all is well. How do you do, Lady Constance? Have you had enough tea, and will you come and see my books?"

He carried her off, Connie extremely nervous, and wondering into what bogs she was about to flounder.

But she was a scholar's daughter, and she had lived with books. She would have scorned to pretend, and her pose, if she had one, was a pose of ignorance—she claimed less than she might. But the Master soon discovered that she had many of her father's tastes, that she knew something of archaeology—he bore it even when she shyly quoted Lanciani—that she read Latin, and was apparently passionately fond of some kinds of poetry. And all the time she pleased his tired eyes by her youth and freshness, and when as she grew at ease with him, and began to chatter to him about Rome, and how the learned there love one another, the Master's startling, discordant laugh rang out repeatedly.

The three in the other room heard it.

"She is amusing him," said Miss Wenlock, looking rather bewildered. "They are generally so afraid of him."

The Master put his head into the drawing-room.

"I am taking Lady Constance into the garden, my dear. Will you three follow when you like?"

He took her through the old house, with the dim faces of former masters and college worthies shining softly on its panelled walls, in the golden lights from the level sun outside, and presently they emerged upon the garden which lay like an emerald encased on three sides by surfaces of silver-grey stone, and overlooked by a delicate classical tower designed by the genius of Christopher Wren. Over one-half of the garden lay an exquisite shadow; the other was in vivid light. The air seemed to be full of bells—a murmurous voice—the voice of Oxford; as though the dead generations were perpetually whispering to the living—"We who built these walls, and laid this turf for you—we, who are dead, call to you who are living—carry on our task, continue our march:

"On to the bound of the waste— On to the City of God!"

A silence fell upon Constance as she walked beside the Master. She was thinking involuntarily of that absent word dropped by her uncle—"Oxford is a place of training"—and there was a passionate and troubled revolt in her. Other ghostly wills seemed to be threatening her—wills that meant nothing to her. No!—her own will should shape her own life! As against the austere appeal that comes from the inner heart of Oxford, the young and restless blood in her sang defiance. "I will ride with him to-morrow—I will—I will!"

But the Master merely thought that she was feeling the perennial spell of the Oxford beauty.

"You are going to like Oxford, I hope?"

"Yes—" said Constance, a little reluctantly. "Oh, of course I shall like it. But it oppresses me—rather."

"I know!" he said eagerly—always trying to place himself in contact with the young mind and life, always seeking something from them in which he was constantly disappointed. "Yes, we all feel that! We who are alive must always fight the past, though we owe it all we have. Oxford has been to me often a witch—a dangerous—almost an evil witch. I seemed to see her—benumbing the young forces of the present. And the scientific and practical men, who would like to scrap her, have sometimes seemed to me right. And then one changes—one changes!"

His voice dropped. All that was slightly grotesque in his outer man, the broad flat head, the red hair, the sharp wedge-like chin, disappeared for Constance in the single impression of his eyes—pale blue, intensely melancholy, and most human.

"Take up some occupation—some study—" he said to her gently. "You won't be long here; but still, ask us for what we can give. In Oxford one must learn something—or teach something. If not, life here goes sour."

Constance repeated Sorell's promise to teach her Greek.

"Excellent!" said the Master. "You will be envied. Sorell is a capital fellow! And one of the ablest of our younger scholars—though of course"—the speaker drew himself up with a slight acerbity—"he and I belong to different schools of criticism. He was devoted to your mother."

Constance assented dumbly.

"And shows already"—thought the Master—"some dangerous signs of being devoted to you. Poor wretch!" Aloud he said—"Ah, here they come. I must get some more chairs."

The drawing-room party joined them, and the gathering lasted a little longer. Sorell walked up and down with Constance. She liked him increasingly—could not help liking him. And apart from his personal charm, he recalled all sorts of pleasant things and touching memories to her. But he was almost oppressively refined and scrupulous and high-minded. "He is too perfect!" she thought rebelliously. "One can't be as good as that. It isn't allowed."

As to Mrs. Mulholland, Constance felt herself taken possession of—mothered—by that lady. She could not understand why, but though rather puzzled and bewildered, she did not resist. There was something, indeed, in the generous dark eyes that every now and then touched the girl's feeling intolerably, as though it reminded her of a tenderness she had been long schooling herself to do without.

"Come and see me, my dear, whenever you like. I have a house in St. Giles, and all my husband's books. I do a lot of things—I am a guardian—I work at the schools—the town schools for the town children, et cetera. We all try to save our souls by committees nowadays. But my real business is to talk, and make other people talk. So I am always at home in the evenings after dinner, and a good many people come. Bring Nora sometimes. Alice doesn't like me. Your aunt will let you come—though we don't know each other very well. I am very respectable."

The laughing face looked into Constance's, which laughed back.

"That's all right!" said Mrs. Mulholland, as though some confidences had been exchanged between them. "You might find me useful. Consider me a friend of the family. I make rather a good umbrella-stand. People can lean against me if they like. I hold firm. Good-bye. That's the Cathedral bell."

But Constance and Sorell, followed discreetly by Annette, departed first. Mrs. Mulholland stayed for a final word to the Master, before obeying the silver voice from St. Frideswide's tower.

"To think of that girl being handed over to Ellen Hooper, just when all her love affairs will be coming on! A woman with the wisdom of a rabbit, and the feelings of a mule! And don't hold your finger up at me, Master! You know you can't suffer fools at all—either gladly—or sadly. Now let me go, Grace!—or I shan't be fit for church."

* * * * *

"A very pretty creature!" said Ewen Hooper admiringly—"and you look very well on her, Constance."

He addressed his niece, who had been just put into her saddle by the neat groom who had brought the horses.

Mrs. Hooper, Alice and Nora were standing on the steps of the old house. A knot of onlookers had collected on the pavement—mostly errand boys. The passing undergraduates tried not to look curious, and hurried by. Constance, in her dark blue riding-habit and a tricorne felt hat which she had been accustomed to wear in the Campagna, kept the mare fidgeting and pawing a little that her uncle might inspect both her and her rider, and then waved her hand in farewell.

"Where are you going, Connie?" cried Nora.

"Somewhere out there—beyond the railway," she said vaguely, pointing with her riding-whip. "I shall be back in good time."

And she went off followed by Joseph, the groom, a man of forty, lean and jockey-like, with a russet and wrinkled countenance which might mean anything or nothing.

"A ridiculous hat!" said Alice, maliciously. "Nobody wears such a hat in England to ride in. Think of her appearing like that in the Row!"

"It becomes her." The voice was Nora's, sharp and impatient.

"It is theatrical, like everything Connie does," said Mrs. Hooper severely. "I beg that neither of you will copy her."

Nora walked to the door opening on the back garden, and stood there frowning and smiling unseen.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Joseph followed close at Connie's side, directing her, till they passed through various crowded streets, and left the railway behind. Then trotting under a sunny sky, on a broad vacant road, they made for a line of hills in the middle distance.

The country was early June at its best. The river meadows blazed with buttercups; the river itself, when Constance occasionally caught a glimpse of its windings, lay intensely blue under a wide azure sky, magnificently arched on a great cornice built of successive strata of white and purple cloud, which held the horizon. Over the Lathom Woods the cloud-line rose and fell in curves that took the line of the hill. The woods themselves lay in a haze of heat, the sunlight on the rounded crests of the trees, and the shadows cast by the westerly sun, all fused within the one shimmering veil of blue. The air was fresh and life-giving. Constance felt herself in love with life and the wide Oxford scene. The physical exercise delighted her, and the breathless sense of adventure.

But it was disagreeable to reflect, as she must do occasionally, that the sphinx-like groom knew perfectly well that she was going to the Lathom Woods, that he had the key of the nearest gate in his pocket, that he would be a witness of her meeting with Falloden, whatever they did with him afterwards, and that Falloden had in all probability paid him largely to hold his tongue. All that side of it was odious—degrading. But the thought of the green rides, and the man waiting for her, set all the blood in her wild veins dancing. Yet there was little or nothing in her feeling of a girl's yearning for a lover. She wanted to see Falloden—to talk with him and dispute with him. She could not be content for long without seeing him. He excited her—provoked her—haunted her. And to feel her power over him was delightful, if it had not been spoilt by a kind of recurrent fear—a panic fear of his power over her.

What did she know of him after all? She was quite aware that her friends, the Kings, had made some enquiries at Cannes before allowing her to see so much of him as she had done during his stay with the rich and hospitable Jaroslavs. She believed Colonel King had not liked him personally. But Douglas Falloden belonged to one of the oldest English families, settled on large estates in Yorkshire, with distinguished records in all the great services; he was heir presumptive to a marquisate, so long as his uncle, Lord Dagnall, now past seventy, did not take it into his head to marry; and there was his brilliant career at Oxford, his good looks and all the rest of it. Constance had a strong dash of the worldling in her mixed character. She had been brought up with Italian girl friends of the noble class, in whom the practical instincts of a practical race were closely interwoven with what the Englishman thinks of as Italian "romance" or "passion." She had discussed dowries and settlements since she was fifteen; and took the current values of wealth and birth for granted. She was quite aware of her own advantages, and was not at all minded to throw them away. A brilliant marriage was, perhaps, at the back of her mind, as it is at the back of the minds of so many beautiful creatures who look and breathe poetry, while they are aware, within a few pounds, of what can be done in London on five thousand—or ten thousand—a year. She inevitably thought of herself as quite different from the girls of poor or middle-class families, who must earn their living—Nora, for instance.

And yet there was really a gulf between her and the ordinary worldling. It consisted in little else than a double dose of personality—a richer supply of nerve and emotion. She could not imagine life without money, because she had always lived with rich people. But money was the mere substratum; what really mattered was the excitement of loving, and being loved. She had adored her parents with an absorbing affection. Then, as she grew up, everywhere in her Roman life, among her girl friends, or the handsome youths she remembered riding in the Villa Borghese gymkhana, she began to be aware of passion and sex; she caught the hints of them, as it were of a lightning playing through the web of life, flashing, and then gone—illuminating or destroying. Her mind was full of love stories. At twenty she had been the confidante of many, both from her married and her unmarried friends. It was all, so far, a great mystery to her. But there was in her a thrilled expectation. Not of a love, tranquil and serene, such as shone on her parents' lives, but of something overwhelming and tempestuous; into which she might fling her life as one flings a flower into the current of Niagara.

It was the suggestion of such a possibility that had drawn her first to Douglas Falloden. For three golden days she had imagined herself blissfully in love with him. Then had come disillusion and repulsion. What was violent and imperious in him had struck on what was violent and imperious in her. She had begun to hold him off—to resist him. And that resistance had been more exciting even than the docility of the first phase. It had ended in his proposal, the snatched kiss, and a breach. And now, she had little idea of what would happen; and would say to herself, recklessly, that she did not care. Only she must see him—must go on exploring him. And as for allowing her intimacy with him to develop in any ordinary way—under the eyes of the Hoopers—or of Oxford—it was not to be thought of. Rather than be tamely handed over to him in a commonplace wooing, she would have broken off all connection with him; and that she had not the strength to do.

* * * * *

"Here is the gate, my lady."

The man produced a key from his pocket and got down to open it. Constance passed into a green world. Three "drives" converged in front of her, moss-carpeted, and close-roofed by oak-wood in its first rich leaf. After the hot sun on the straight and shadeless road outside, these cool avenues stretching away into a forest infinity, seemed to beckon a visitant towards some distant Elysian scene—some glade haunted of Pan.

Constance looked down them eagerly. Which was she to take?—suddenly, far down the right hand drive, a horseman—coming into view. He perceived her, gave a touch to his horse, and was quickly beside her.

Both were conscious of the groom, who had reined in a few yards behind, and sat impassive.

Falloden saluted her joyously. He rode a handsome Irish horse, nearly black, with a white mark on its forehead; a nervous and spirited creature, which its rider handled with the ease of one trained from his childhood to the hunting field. His riding dress, with its knee-breeches and leggings pleased the feminine eye; so did his strong curly head as he bared it, and the animation of his look.

"This is better, isn't it, than ''ammer, 'ammer, 'ammer on the 'ard 'igh road!' I particularly want to show you the bluebells—they're gorgeous! But they're quite on the other side—a long way off. And then you'll be tired—you'll want tea. I've arranged it."

"Joseph"—he turned to the groom—"you know the head keeper's cottage?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, go off there and wait. Tell the keeper's wife that I shall bring a lady to tea there in about an hour. She knows." Joseph turned obediently, took the left hand road, and was soon out of sight.

The two riders paced side by side through the green shadows of the wood. Constance was flushed—but 'she looked happy and gracious. Falloden had not seen her so gracious since Oxford had brought them again across each other. They fell at once, for the first time since her arrival, into the easy talk of their early Riviera days; and he found himself doing his very best to please her. She asked him questions about his approaching schools; and it amused him, in the case of so quick a pupil, to frame a "chaffing" account of Oxford examinations and degrees; to describe the rush of an Honour man's first year before the mods' gate is leaped; the loitering and "slacking" of the second year and part of the third; and then the setting of teeth and girding of loins, when a man realises that some of the lost time is gone forever, and that the last struggle is upon him.

"What I am doing now is degrading!—getting 'tips' from the tutors—pinning up lists—beastly names and dates—in my rooms—learning hard bits by heart—cribbing and stealing all I can. And I have still some of my first year's work to go through again. I must cut Oxford for the last fortnight—and go into retreat."

Constance expressed her wonder that any one could ever do any work in the summer term—

"You are all so busy lunching each other's Sisters and cousins and aunts! It is a great picnic—not a university," she said flippantly.