"Distracting, I admit—but—"

He paused.

"But—what?"

After a moment, he turned a glowing countenance towards her.

"That is not my chief cause of flight!"

She professed not to understand.

"It is persons distract me—not tea-parties. Persons I want to be seeing and talking to—persons I can not keep myself away from."

He looked straight before him. The horses ambled on together, the reins on their necks. In the distance a cuckoo called from the river meadows, and round the two young figures one might have fancied an attendant escort of birds, as wrens, tits, pippets, fled startled by their approach.

Constance laughed. The laugh, though very musical, was sarcastic.

"I don't see you as a shuttlecock!"

"Tossed by the winds of fate? You think I can always make myself do what I wish?"

"That's how I read you—at present."

'Hm—a charming character! Everything calculated—nothing spontaneous. That I think is what you mean?"

"No. But I doubt your being carried away."

He flushed hotly.

"Lady Connie!—"

He paused. Her colour rushed too. She saw what he was thinking of; she perceived her blunder.

"For what else did you castigate me at Cannes?" he said, in a low voice. And his black eyes looked passionately into hers. But she recovered herself quickly.

"At any rate, you have more will than most people," she said lightly. "Aren't you always boasting of it? But you are quite right to go away."

"I am not going for a week," he put in quickly. "There will be time for two more rides."

She made no reply, and they paced on. Suddenly the trees began to thin before them, and a splendid wave of colour swept across an open glade in full sunlight.

"Marvellous!" cried Constance. "Oh, stop a moment!"

They pulled up on the brink of a sea of blue. All around them the bluebells lay glowing in the sunshine. The colour and sparkle of them was a physical delight; and with occasional lingering tufts of primroses among them and the young oak scrub pushing up through the blue in every shade of gold and bronze, they made an enchanted garden of the glade.

Falloden dismounted, tied up his horse, and gathered a bunch for his companion.

"I don't know—ought we?" she said regretfully. "They are not so beautiful when they are torn away. And in a week they will be gone—withered!"

She stooped over them, caressing them, as, taking a strap from the pocket of his own saddle, he tied the flowers to her pommel.

He looked up impetuously.

"Only to spring again!—in this same wood—in other woods—for us to see. Do you ever think how full the world is of sheer pleasure—small and great?" And his eyes told her plainly what his pleasure was at that moment.

Something jarred. She drew herself away, though with fluttering pulses. Falloden, with a strong effort, checked the tide of impulse in himself. He mounted again, and suggested a gallop, through a long stretch of green road on the further side of the glade. They let their horses go, and the flying hoof-beats woke the very heart of the wood.

"That was good!" cried Falloden, as they pulled up, drawing in deep draughts of the summer wind. Then he looked at her admiringly.

"How well you hold yourself! You are a perfect rider!"

Against her will Constance sparkled under his praise. Then they turned their horses towards the keeper's cottage, and the sun fell lower in the west.

"Mr. Falloden," said Constance presently, "I want you to promise me something."

"Ask me," he said eagerly.

"I want you to give up ragging Otto Radowitz!"

His countenance changed.

"Who has been talking to you?"

"That doesn't matter. It is unworthy of you. Give it up."

Falloden laughed with good humour.

"I assure you it does him a world of good!"

She argued hotly; astonished, in her young inexperience, that his will could so soon reassert itself against hers; sharply offended, indeed, that after she had given him the boon of this rendezvous, he could hesitate for a moment as to the boon she asked in return—had humbled herself to ask. For had she not often vowed to herself that she would never, never ask the smallest favour of him; while on her side a diet of refusals and rebuffs was the only means to keep him in check?

But that diet was now gaily administered to herself.

Falloden argued with energy that a man who has never been to a public school has got to be "disciplined" at the university; that Otto Radowitz, being an artist, was specially in need of discipline; that no harm had been done him, or would be done him. But he must be made to understand that certain liberties and impertinences would not be tolerated by the older men.

"He never means them!" cried Constance. "He doesn't understand. He is a foreigner."

"No! He is an Englishman here—and must behave as such. Don't spoil him, Lady Connie!"

He looked at her imperiously—half smiling, half frowning.

"Remember!—he is my friend!"

"I do remember," he said drily. "I am not likely to forget." Constance flushed, and proudly dropped the subject. He saw that he had wounded her, but he quietly accepted it. There was something in the little incident that made her more aware of his overbearing character than ever.

"If I married him," she thought, "I should be his slave!"

Tea had been daintily spread for them under a birch-tree near the keeper's lodge. The keeper's wife served them with smiles and curtsies, and then discreetly disappeared. Falloden waited on Constance as a squire on his princess; and all round them lay the green encircling rampart of the wood. In the man's every action, there was the homage of one who only keeps silence because the woman he loves imposes it. But Constance again felt that recurrent fear creeping over her. She had been a fool—a fool!

He escorted her to the gate of the wood where Joseph was waiting.

"And now for our next merry meeting?" he said, as he got down to tighten her stirrup which had stretched a little.

Constance hurriedly said she could not promise—there were so many engagements.

Falloden did not press her. But he held her hand when she gave it him.

"Are you angry with me?" he said, in a low voice, while his eyes mocked a little.

"No—only disappointed!"

"Isn't that unkind? Haven't we had a golden time?" His tone smote her a little.

"It was heavenly," she said, "till—"

"Till I behaved like a brute?"

She laughed excitedly, and waved farewell.

Falloden, smiling, watched her go, standing beside his horse—a Siegfried parting from Brunhilde.

When she and the groom had disappeared, he mounted and rode off towards another exit.

"I must be off to-morrow!" he said to himself with decision—"or my schools will go to the dogs!"



CHAPTER VII

"Three more invitations!—since lunch," said Mrs. Hooper, as she came into the schoolroom, where her elder daughter sat by the window renovating a garden hat.

Her mother dropped the envelopes on a small table beside Alice, and sitting down on the other side of it, she waited for her daughter's comments.

Alice threw down her work, and hastily opened the notes. She flushed an angry pink as she read them.

"I might as well not exist!" she said shortly, as she pushed them away again.

For two of the notes requested the pleasure of Dr. and Mrs. Hooper's and Lady Constance Bledlow's company at dinner, and the third, from a very great lady, begged "dear Mrs. Hooper" to bring Lady Constance to a small party in Wolsey College Gardens, to meet the Chancellor of the University, a famous Tory peer, who was coming down to a public, meeting. In none of the three was there any mention of the elder Miss Hooper.

Mrs. Hooper looked worried. It was to her credit that her maternal feeling, which was her only passion, was more irritated by this sudden stream of invitations than her vanity was tickled.

What was there indeed to tickle anybody's vanity in the situation? It was all Constance—Constance—Constance! Mrs. Hooper was sometimes sick of the very name "Lady Constance Bledlow," It had begun to get on her nerves. The only defence against any sort of "superiority," as some one has said, is to love it. But Mrs. Hooper did not love her husband's niece. She was often inclined to wish, as she caught sight of Alice's pinched face, that the household had never seen her. And yet without Connie's three hundred a year, where would the household be!

Mrs. Hooper was painfully, one might have said, guiltily aware of that side of the business. She was an incompetent, muddling woman, who had never learnt to practise the simple and dignified thrift so common in the academic households of the University. For nowhere, really, was plain living gayer or more attractive than in the new Oxford of this date. The young mothers who wheeled their own perambulators in the Parks, who bathed and dressed and taught their children, whose house-books showed a spirited and inventive economy of which they were inordinately proud, who made their own gowns of Liberty stuff in scorn of the fashion, were at the same time excellent hostesses, keeping open house on Sundays for their husbands' undergraduate pupils, and gallantly entertaining their own friends and equals at small flowery dinner-parties in Morris-papered rooms, where the food and wine mattered little, and good talk and happy comradeship were the real fare. Meanwhile the same young mothers were going to lectures on the Angevins, or reading Goethe or Dante in the evenings—a few friends together, gathering at each other's houses; then were discussing politics and social reform; and generally doing their best—unconsciously—to silence the croakers and misogynists who maintained that when all the girl babies in the perambulators were grown up, and Oxford was flooded with womenkind like all other towns, Oxford would have gone to "Death and damnation."

But Mrs. Hooper, poor lady, was not of this young and wholesome generation. She was the daughter of a small Midland manufacturer, who had rushed into sudden wealth, for a few years, had spent it all in riotous living, over a period just sufficient to spoil his children, and had then died leaving them penniless. Ewen Hooper had come across her when he was lecturing at a northern university, immediately after his own appointment at Oxford. He had passed a harassed and penurious youth, was pining for a home. In ten days he was engaged to this girl whom he met at the house of a Manchester professor. She took but little wooing, was indeed so enchanted to be wooed that Ewen Hooper soon imagined himself in love with her; and all was done.

Nor indeed had it answered so badly for him—for a time. She had given him children, and a home, though an uncomfortable one. Greek scholarship and Greek beauty were the real idols of his heart and imagination. They did not fail him. But his wife did him one conspicuous ill turn. From the first days of their marriage, she ran her husband badly into debt; and things had got slowly worse with the years. Mrs. Hooper was the most wasteful of managers; servants came and went interminably; and while money oozed away, there was neither comfort nor luxury to show for it. As the girls grew up, they learnt to dread the sound of the front doorbell, which so often meant an angry tradesman; and Ewen Hooper, now that he was turning grey, lived amid a perpetual series of mean annoyances with which he was never meant to cope, and which he was now beginning to hand over, helplessly, to his younger daughter Nora, the one member of the family who showed some power to deal with them.

The situation had been almost acute, when Lord Risborough died. But there was a legacy in his will for Ewen Hooper which had given a breathing space; and Connie had readily consented to pay a year's maintenance in advance. Yet still the drawer of bills, on which Nora kept anxious watch, was painfully full; and of late the perennial difficulty of ready money had reappeared.

Mrs. Hooper declared she must have a new dress, if these invitations were to be accepted.

"I don't want anything extravagant," she said fretfully. "But really it's too bad of Nora to say that I could have my old blue one done up. She never seems to care how her mother looks. If all this fuss is going to be made about Constance and I am to take her out, I must be decent!"

The small underhung mouth shut obstinately. These musts of her mother's and Alice's were Nora's terror. They always meant a new bill.

Alice said—"Of course! And especially when Constance dresses so extravagantly!" she added bitterly. "One can't look like her scullery-maid!"

Mrs. Hooper sighed. She glanced round her to see that the door was shut.

"That silly child, Nora, had quite a scene with Connie this morning, because Connie offered to give her that pretty white dress in Brandon's window. She told me Connie had insulted her. Such nonsense! Why shouldn't Connie give her a dress—and you too? She has more money than she knows how to spend."

Alice did not reply. She, too, wanted new dresses; she could hardly endure the grace and costliness of Connie's garments, when she compared them with her own; but there was something in her sad little soul also that would not let her be beholden to Connie. Not without a struggle, anyway.

"I don't want Connie to give me things either," she said sulkily. "She's never been the least nice to me. She makes a pet of Nora, and the rest of us might be doormats for all the notice she takes of us."

"Well, I don't know—she's quite civil," said Mrs. Hooper reflectively. She added, after a minute—"It's extraordinary how the servants will do anything for her!"

"Why, of course, she tips them!" cried Alice, indignantly. Mrs. Hooper shrugged her shoulders. It was quite indifferent to her whether Connie tipped them or not, so long as she gained by the result. And there was no denying the fact that the house had never gone so smoothly as since Connie's arrival. At the same time her conscience reminded her that there was probably something else than "tipping" in the matter. For instance—both Constance and Annette were now intimately acquainted with each of Mrs. Hooper's three maids, and all their family histories; whereas Mrs. Hooper always found it impossible to remember their surnames. A few days before this date, Susan the housemaid had received a telegram telling her of the sudden death of a brother in South Africa. In Mrs. Hooper's view it was providential that the death had occurred in South Africa, as there could be no inconvenient question of going to the funeral. But Connie had pleaded that the girl might go home for two days to see her mother; Annette had done the housework during her absence; and both maid and mistress had since been eagerly interested in the girl's mourning, which had been largely supplied out of Connie's wardrobe. Naturally the opinion of the kitchen was that "her ladyship is sweet!"

Alice, however, had not found any sweetness in Connie. Was it because Mr. Herbert Pryce seemed to take a mysterious pleasure in pointing out her, charms to Alice? Alice supposed he meant it well. There was a didactic element in him which was always leading him to try and improve other people. But it filled her with a silent fury.

"Is everybody coming to the picnic to-morrow?" asked Mrs. Hooper presently.

"Everybody." Alice pointed indifferently to a pile of notes lying on her desk.

"You asked Connie if we should invite Mr. Falloden?"

"Of course I did, mother. He is away till next week."

"I wonder if she cares for him?" said Mrs. Hooper vaguely.

Alice laughed.

"If she does, she consoles herself pretty well, when he's not here."

"You mean with Mr. Sorell?"

Alice nodded.

"Such a ridiculous pretence, those Greek lessons!" she said, her small face flaming. "Nora says, after they have done a few lines, Constance begins to talk, and Mr. Sorell throws himself back in his chair, and they chatter about the places they've seen together, and the people they remember, till there's no more time left. Nora says it's a farce."

"I say, who's taking my name in vain?" said Nora, who had just opened the schoolroom door and overheard the last sentence.

"Come in and shut the door," said Alice, "we were talking about your Greek lessons."

"Jolly fun they are!" said Nora, balancing herself, as usual, on the window-sill. "We don't do much Greek, but that don't matter! What are these notes, mother?"

Mrs. Hooper handed them over. Alice threw a mocking look at her sister.

"Who said that Oxford didn't care about titles? When did any of those people ever take any notice of us?"

"It isn't titles—it's Connie!" said Nora stoutly. "It's because she's handsome and clever—and yet she isn't conceited; she's always interested in other people. And she's an orphan—and people were very fond of her mother. And she talks scrumptiously about Italy. And she's new—and there's a bit of romance in it—and—well, there it is!"

And Nora pulled off a twig from the banksia rose outside, and began to chew it energetically with her firm white teeth, by way of assisting her thoughts.

"Isn't conceited!" repeated Alice with contempt. "Connie is as proud as Lucifer."

"I didn't say she wasn't. But she isn't vain."

Alice laughed.

"Can't you see the difference?" said Nora impatiently. "'Proud' means 'Don't be such a fool as to imagine that I'm thinking of you!'—'Vain' means 'I wonder dreadfully what you're thinking of me?'"

"Well then, Connie is both proud and vain," said Alice with decision.

"I don't mean she doesn't know she's rich, and good-looking and run after," said Nora, beginning to flounder. "But half the time, anyway, she forgets it."

"Except when she is talking to men," said Alice vindictively, to which Mrs. Hooper added with her little obstinate air—

"Any girl who likes admiration as much as Connie does must be vain. Of course, I don't blame her."

"Likes admiration? Hm," said Nora, still chewing at her twig. "Yes, I suppose she does. But she's good at snubbing, too." And she threw a glance at her sister. She was thinking of a small evening party the night before, at which, it seemed to her, Connie had several times snubbed Herbert Pryce rather severely. Alice said nothing. She knew what Nora meant. But that Connie should despise what she had filched away only made things worse.

Mrs. Hooper sighed again—loudly.

"The point is—is she carrying on with that man, Mr. Falloden?"

Nora looked up indignantly. Her mother's vulgarity tormented her.

"How can she be 'carrying on,' mother? He won't be in Oxford again till his schools."

"Oh, you never know," said Mrs. Hooper vaguely. "Well, I must go and answer these notes."

She went away. Nora descended gloomily from the window-sill.

"Mother wants a new dress. If we don't all look out, we shall be in Queer Street again."

"You're always so dismal," said Alice impatiently. "Things are a great deal better than they were."

"Well, goodness knows what would have happened to us if they weren't!" cried Nora. "Besides they 're not nearly so much better as you think. And the only reason why they're better is that Uncle Risborough left us some money, and Connie's come to live here. And you and mother do nothing but say horrid things about her, behind her back!"

She looked at her sister with accusing eyes. But Alice tossed her head, and declared she wasn't going to be lectured by her younger sister. "You yourself told mother this morning that Connie had insulted you."

"Yes, and I was a beast to say so!" cried the girl "She meant it awfully well. Only I thought she thought I had been trying to sponge on her; because I said something about having no dresses for the Commem. balls, even if I wanted to 'come out' then—which I don't!—and she straightaway offered to give me that dress in Brandon's. And I was cross, and behaved like a fiend. And afterwards Connie said she was awfully sorry if she'd hurt my feelings."

And suddenly Nora's brown eyes filled with tears.

"Well, you get on with her," said Alice, with fresh impatience—"and I don't. That's all there is to it. Now do go away and let me get on with the hat."

* * * * *

That night, after Connie had finished her toilet for the night and was safely in bed, with a new novel of Fogazzaro before her and a reading lamp beside her, she suddenly put out her arms, and took Annette's apple-red countenance—as the maid stooped over her to straighten the bed-clothes—between her two small hands.

"Netta, I've had a real bad day!"

"And why, please, my lady?" said Annette rather severely, as she released herself.

"First I had a quarrel with Nora—then some boring people came to lunch—then I had a tiresome ride—and now Aunt Ellen has been pointing out to me that it's all my fault she has to get a new dress, because people will ask me to dinner-parties. I don't want to go to dinner-parties!"

And Connie fell back on her pillows, with a great stretch, her black brows drawn over eyes that still smiled beneath them.

"It's very ungrateful of you to talk of a tiresome ride—when that gentleman took such pains to get you a nice horse," said Annette, still tidying and folding as she moved about the room. Constance watched her, her eyes shining absently as the thoughts passed through them. At last she said:

"Do come here, Annette!"

Annette came, rather unwillingly. She sat down on the end of Constance's bed, and took out some knitting from her pocket. She foresaw a conversation in which she would need her wits about her, and some mechanical employment steadied the mind.

"Annette, you know," said Constance slowly, "I've got to be married some time."

"I've heard you say that before." Annette began to count some stitches.

"Oh, it's all very well," said Constance, with amusement—"you think you know all about me, but you don't. You don't know, for instance, that I went to ride over a week ago with a young man, without telling you, or Aunt Ellen, or Uncle Ewen, or anybody!" She waited to see the effect of her announcement. Annette did appear rather startled.

"I suppose you met him on the road?"

"I didn't! I made an appointment with him. We went to a big wood, some miles out of Oxford, belonging to some people he knows, where there are beautiful grass rides. He has the key of the gates—we sent away the groom—and I was an hour alone with him—quite! There!"

There was a defiant accent on the last word. Annette shook her head. She had been fifteen years in the Risboroughs' service, and remembered Connie when she was almost a baby.

"Whatever were you so silly for? You know your mamma wouldn't have let you."

"Well, I've not got my mamma," said Connie slowly. "And I'm not going to be managed by Aunt Ellen, Netta. I intend to run my own show."

"Who is it?" said Annette, knitting busily.

Connie laughed.

"Do you think I'm going to tell you?"

"You needn't. I've got eyes in my head. It's that gentleman you met in France."

Connie swung herself round and laid violent hands on Annette's knitting.

"You shan't knit. Look at me! You can't say he's not good-looking?"

"Which he knows—a deal sight more than is good for him," said Annette, setting her mouth a little grimly.

"Everybody knows when they're good-looking, you dear silly! Of course, he's most suitable—dreadfully so. And I can't make up my mind whether I care for him a bit!"

She folded her arms in front of her, her little chin fell forward on her white wrappings, and she stared rather sombrely into vacancy.

"What's wrong with him?" said Annette after a pause—adopting a tone in which she might have discussed a new hat.

"Oh, I don't know," said Connie dreamily.

She was thinking of Falloden's sudden departure from Oxford, after his own proposal of two more rides. His note, "crying off" till after the schools, had seemed to her not quite as regretful as it might have been; his epistolary style lacked charm. And it was impertinent of him to suggest Lord Meyrick as a substitute. She had given the Lathom Woods a wide berth ever since her first adventure there; and she hoped that Lord Meyrick had spent some disappointed hours in those mossy rides.

All the same it looked as though she were going to see a good deal of Douglas Falloden. She raised her eyes suddenly.

"Annette, I didn't tell you I'd heard from two of my aunts to-day!"

"You did!" Annette dropped her knitting of her own accord this time, and sat open-mouthed.

"Two long letters. Funny, isn't it? Well, Aunt Langmoor wants me to go to her directly—in time anyway for a ball at Tamworth House—horribly smart—Prince and Princess coming—everybody begging for tickets. She's actually got an invitation for me—I suppose by asking for it!—rather calm of her. She calls me 'Dearest Connie.' And I never saw her! But papa used to be fond of her, and she was never rude to mamma. What shall I say?"

"Well, I think you'd much better go," said Annette decidedly. "You've never worn that dress you got at Nice, and it'll be a dish-cloth if you keep it much longer. The way we have to crush things in this place!"

And she looked angrily even at the capacious new wardrobe which took up one whole side of the room.

"All right!" laughed Constance. "Then I'll accept Aunt Langmoor, because you can't find any room for my best frock. It's a toss up. That settles it. Well, but now for Aunt Marcia—"

She drew a letter from the pages of her French book, and opened it.

* * * * *

"My dear Constance"—so it ran—"I should like to make your acquaintance, and I hear that you are at Oxford with your uncle. I would come and see you but that I never leave home. Oxford, too, depresses me dreadfully. Why should people learn such a lot of useless things? We are being ruined by all this education. However, what I meant to say was that Winifred and I would be glad to see you here if you care to come. Winifred, by the way, is quite aware that she behaved like a fool twenty-two years ago. But as you weren't born then, we suggest it shouldn't matter. We have all done foolish things. I, for instance, invented a dress—a kind of bloomer thing—only it wasn't a bloomer. I took a shop for it in Bond Street, and it nearly ruined me. But I muddled through—that's our English way, isn't it?—and somehow things come right. Now, I am very political, and Winifred's very churchy—it doesn't really matter what you take up. So do come. You can bring your maid and have a sitting-room. Nobody would interfere with you. But, of course, we should introduce you to some nice people. If you are a sensible girl—and I expect you are, for your father was a very clever man—you must know that you ought to marry as soon as possible. There aren't many young men about here. What becomes of all the young men in England, I'm sure I don't know. But there are a few—and quite possible. There are the Kenbarrows, about four miles off—a large family—nouveaux riches—the father made buttons, or something of the kind. But the children are all most presentable, and enormously rich. And, of course, there are the Fallodens—quite near—Mr. and Lady Laura, Douglas, the eldest son, a girl of seventeen, and two children. You'll probably see Douglas at Oxford. Oh, I believe Sir Arthur Falloden, pere, told me the other day you had already met him somewhere. Winifred and I don't like Douglas. But that's neither here nor there. He's a magnificent creature, who can't be bothered with old ladies. He'll no doubt make himself agreeable to you—cela va sans dire. I don't altogether like what I hear sometimes about the Fallodens. Of course Sir Arthur's very rich, but they say he's been speculating enormously, and that he's been losing a good deal of money lately. However, I don't suppose it matters. Their place, Flood Castle, is really splendid—old to begin with, and done up! They have copied the Americans and given every room a bathroom. Absurd extravagance! And think of the plumbing! It was that kind of thing gave the Prince of Wales typhoid. I hate drains!

"Well, anyway, do come and see us. Sophia Langmoor tells me she has written to you, and if you go to her, you might come on here afterwards. Winifred who has just read this letter says it will 'put you off.' I don't see why it should. I certainly don't want it to. I'm downright, I know, but I'm not hypocritical. The world's just run on white lies nowadays—and I can't stand it. I don't tell any—if I can help.

"Oh, and there is Penfold Rectory not very far off—and a very nice man there, though too 'broad' for Winifred. He tells me he's going to have some people staying with him—a Mr. Sorell, and a young musician with a Polish name—I can't remember it. Mr. Sorell's going to coach the young man, or something. They're to be paying guests, for a month at least. Mr. Powell was Mr. Sorell's college tutor—and Mr. Powell's dreadfully poor—so I'm glad. No wife, mercifully!

"Anyway, you see, there are plenty of people about. Do come.

"I am, dear Constance, Your affectionate aunt, MARCIA RISBOROUGH."

"Now what on earth am I going to do about that?" said Constance, tossing the letter over to Annette.

"Well, Mr. and Mrs. Hooper are going, cook says, to the Isle of Wight, and Miss Alice is going with them," said Annette, "and Miss Nora's going to join them after a bit in Scotland."

"I know all that," said Constance impatiently. "The question is—do you see me sitting in lodgings at Ryde with Aunt Ellen for five or six weeks, doing a little fancy-work, and walking out with Aunt Ellen and Alice on the pier?"

Annette laughed discreetly over her knitting, but said nothing.

"No," said Connie decidedly. "That can't be done. I shall have to sample Aunt Marcia. I must speak to Uncle Ewen to-morrow. Now put the light out, please, Annette; I'm going to sleep."

But it was some time before she went to sleep. The night was hot and thunderous, and her windows were wide open. Drifting in came the ever-recurring bells of Oxford, from the boom of the Christ Church "Tom," far away, through every variety of nearer tone. Connie lay and sleepily listened to them. To her they were always voices, half alive, half human, to which the dreaming mind put words that varied with the mood of the dreamer.

Presently, she breathed a soft good night into the darkness—"Mummy—mummy darling! good night!" It was generally her last waking thought. But suddenly another—which brought with it a rush of excitement—interposed between her and sleep.

"Tuesday," she murmured—"Mr. Sorell says the schools will be over by Tuesday. I wonder!—"

And again the bluebell carpet seemed to be all round her—the light and fragrance and colour of the wood. And the man on the black horse beside her was bending towards her, all his harsh strength subdued, for the moment, to the one end of pleasing her. She saw the smile in his dark eyes; and the touch of sarcastic brusquerie in the smile, that could rouse her own fighting spirit, as the touch of her whip roused the brown mare.

* * * * *

"Am I really so late?" said Connie, in distress, running downstairs the following afternoon to find the family and various guests waiting for her in the hall.

"Well, I hope we shan't miss everybody," said Alice sharply. "How late are we?"

She turned to Herbert Pryce.

The young don smiled and evaded the question.

"Nearly half an hour!" said Alice. "Of course they'll think we're not coming."

"They" were another section of the party who were taking a couple of boats round from the lower river, and were to meet the walkers coming across the Parks, at the Cherwell.

"Dreadfully sorry!" said Connie, who had opened her eyes, however, as though Alice's tone astonished her. "But my watch has gone quite mad."

"It does it every afternoon!" murmured Alice to a girl friend of Nora's who was going with the party. It was an aside, but plainly heard by Constance—whose cheeks flushed.

She turned appealingly to Herbert Pryce.

"Please carry my waterproof, while I button my gloves." Pryce was enchanted. As the party left the house, he and Constance walked on together, ahead of the others. She put on her most charming manners, and the young man was more than flattered.

What was it, he asked himself, complacently, that gave her such a delicate distinction? Her grey dress, and soft grey hat, were, he supposed, perfect of their kind. But Oxford in the summer term was full of pretty dresses. No, it must be her ease, her sureness of herself that banished any awkward self-consciousness both in herself and her companions, and allowed a man to do himself justice.

He forgot her recent snubs and went off at score about his own affairs, his college, his prospects of winning a famous mathematical prize given by the Berlin Academy, his own experience of German Universities, and the shortcomings of Oxford. On these last he became scornfully voluble. He was inclined to think he should soon cut it, and go in for public life. These university towns were really very narrowing!

"Certainly," said Constance amiably. Was he thinking of Parliament?

Well, no, not at once. But journalism was always open to a man with brains, and through journalism one got into the House, when the chance came along. The House of Commons was dangerously in want of new blood.

"I am certain I could speak," he said ardently. "I have made several attempts here, and I may say they have always come off."

Constance threw him a shy glance. She was thinking of a dictum of Uncle Ewen's which he had delivered to her on a walk some days previously. "What is it makes the mathematicians such fools? They never seem to grow up. They tell us they're splendid fellows, and of course we must believe them. But who's to know?"

Meanwhile, Alice and Sorell followed them at some distance behind, while Mrs. Hooper and three or four other members of the party brought up the rear. Scroll's look was a little clouded. He had heard what passed in the hall, and he found himself glancing uncomfortably from the girl beside him to the pair forging so gaily ahead. Alice Hooper's expression seemed to him that of something weak and tortured. All through the winter, in the small world of Oxford, the flirtation between Pryce of Beaumont and Ewen Hooper's eldest girl had been a conspicuous thing, even for those who had little or no personal knowledge of the Hoopers. It was noticed with amusement that Pryce had at last found some one to whom he might talk as long and egotistically as he pleased about himself and his career; and kindly mothers had said to each other that it would be a comfort to the Hoopers to have one of the daughters settled, though in a modest way.

"It is pleasant to see that your cousin enjoys Oxford so much," said Sorell, as they neared the museum, and saw Pryce and Connie disappearing through the gate of the park.

"Yes. She seems to like it," said Alice coldly.

Sorell began to talk of his first acquaintance with the Risboroughs, and of Connie's mother. There was no hint in what he said of his own passionate affection for his dead friends. He was not a profaner of shrines. But what he said brought out the vastness of Connie's loss in the death of her mother; and he repeated something of what he had heard from others of her utter physical and mental collapse after the double tragedy of the year before.

"Of course you'll know more about it than I do. But one of the English doctors in Rome, who is a friend of mine, told me that they thought at one time they couldn't pull her through. She seemed to have nothing else to live for."

"Oh, I don't think it was as bad as that," said Alice drily. "Anyway, she's quite well and strong now."

"She's found a home again. That's a great comfort to all her mother's old friends."

Sorell smiled upon his companion; the sensitive kindness in his own nature appealing to the natural pity in hers.

But Alice made no reply; and he dropped the subject.

They walked across the park, under a wide summer sky, towards the winding river, and the low blue hills beyond it. At the Cherwell boat-house they found the two boats, with four or five men, and Nora, as usual, taking charge of everything, at least till Herbert Pryce should appear.

Connie was just stepping into the foremost boat, assisted by Herbert Pryce, who was in his shirt-sleeves, while Lord Meyrick and another Marmion man were already in the boat.

"Sorell, will you stroke the other boat?" said Pryce, "and Miss Nora, will you have a cushion in the bows? Now I think we're made up. No—we want another lady. And running his eyes over those still standing on the bank, he called a plump little woman, the wife of a Llandaff tutor, who had been walking with Mrs. Hooper.

"Mrs. Maddison, will you come with us? I think that will about trim us."

Mrs. Maddison obeyed him with alacrity, and the first boat pushed off. Mrs. Hooper, Alice, Sorell, two St. Cyprian undergraduates and Nora's girl friend, Miss Watson, followed in the second.

Then, while the June evening broadened and declined, the party wound in and out of the curves of the Cherwell. The silver river, brimming from a recent flood, lay sleepily like a gorged serpent between the hay meadows on either side. Flowers of the edge, meadow-sweet, ragged-robin and yellow flags, dipped into the water; willows spread their thin green over the embattled white and blue of the sky; here and there a rat plunged or a bird fled shrieking; bushes of wild roses flung out their branches, and everywhere the heat and the odours of a rich open land proclaimed the fulness of the midland summer.

Connie made the life of the leading boat. Something had roused her, and she began to reveal some of the "parlour-tricks," with which she had amused the Palazzo Barberini in her Roman days. A question from Pryce stirred her into quoting some of the folk-songs of the Campagna, some comic, some tragic, fitting an action to them so lively and true that even those of her hearers who could not follow the dialect sat entranced. Then some one said—"But they ought to be sung!" And suddenly, though rather shyly, she broke into a popular canzone of the Garibaldian time, describing the day of Villa Gloria; the march of the morning, the wild hopes, the fanfaronade; and in the evening, a girl hiding a wounded lover and weeping both for him and "Italia" undone.

The sweet low sounds floated along the river.

"Delicious!" said Sorell, holding his oar suspended to listen. He remembered the song perfectly. He had heard her sing it in many places—Rome, Naples, Syracuse. It was a great favourite with her mother, for whom the national upheaval of Italy—the heroic struggle of the Risorgimento—had been a life-long passion.

"Why did Connie never tell us she could sing!" said Mrs. Hooper in her thin peevish voice. "Girls really shouldn't hide their accomplishments."

Sorell's oar dropped into the water with a splash.

* * * * *

At Marston Ferry, there was a general disembarking, a ramble along the river bank and tea under a group of elms beside a broad reach of the stream. Sorell noticed, that in spite of the regrouping of the two boat loads, as they mingled in the walk, Herbert Pryce never left Connie's side. And it seemed to him, and to others, that she was determined to keep him there. He must gather yellow flag and pink willow-herb for her, must hook a water-lily within reach of the bank with her parasol, must explain to her about English farms, and landlords, and why the labourers were discontented—why there were no peasant owners, as in Italy—and so on, and so on. Round-faced Mrs. Maddison, who had never seen the Hoopers' niece before, watched her with amusement, deciding that, distinguished and refined as the girl was, she was bent on admiration, and not too critical as to whence it came. The good-natured, curly-haired Meyrick, who was discontentedly reduced to helping Alice and Nora with the tea, and had never been so bored with a river picnic before, consoled himself by storing up rich materials for a "chaff" of Douglas when they next met—perhaps that evening, after hall? Alice meanwhile laughed and talked with the freshman whom Meyrick had brought with him from Marmion. Her silence and pallor had gone; she showed a kind of determined vivacity. Sorell, with his strange gift of sympathy, found himself admiring her "pluck."

When the party returned to the boat-house in the evening, Sorell, whose boat had arrived first at the landing-stage, helped Constance to land. Pryce, much against his will, was annexed by Nora to help her return the boats to the Isis; the undergraduates who had brought them being due at various engagements in Oxford. Sorell carried Constance off. He thought that he had never seen her look more radiant. She was flushed with success and praise, and the gold of the river sunset glorified her as she walked. Behind them, dim figures in the twilight, followed Mrs. Hooper and Alice, with the two other ladies, their cavaliers having deserted them.

"I am so glad you like Mr. Pryce," said Sorell suddenly.

Constance looked at him in astonishment.

"But why? I don't like him very much!"

"Really? I was glad because I suppose—doesn't everybody suppose?"—he looked at her smiling—"that there'll be some news in that quarter presently?"

Constance was silent a moment. At last, she said—

"You mean—he'll propose to Alice?"

"Isn't that what's expected?" He too had reddened. He was a shy man, and he was suddenly conscious that he had done a marked thing.

Another silence. Then Constance faced him, her face now more than flushed—aflame.

"I see. You think I have been behaving badly?"

He stammered.

"I didn't know perhaps—whether—you have been such a little while here—whether you had come across the Oxford gossip. I wish sometimes—you know I'm an old friend of your uncle—that it could be settled. Little Miss Alice has begun to look very worn."

Constance walked on, her eyes on the ground. He could see the soft lace on her breast fluttering. What foolish quixotry—what jealousy for an ideal—had made him run this hideous risk of offending her? He held his breath till she should look at him again. When she did, the beauty of the look abashed him.

"Thank you!" she said quietly. "Thank you very much. Alice annoyed me—she doesn't like me, you see—and I took a mean revenge. Well, now you understand—how I miss mamma!"

She held out her hand to him impulsively, and he enclosed it warmly in his; asking her, rather incoherently, to forgive his impertinence. Was it to be Ella Risborough's legacy to him—this futile yearning to help—to watch over—her orphaned child?

Much good the legacy would do him, when Connie's own will was really engaged! He happened to know that Douglas Falloden was already in Oxford again, and in a few more days Greats would be over, and the young man's energies released. What possible justification had he, Sorell, for any sort of interference in this quarter? It seemed to him, indeed, as to many others, that the young man showed every sign of a selfish and violent character. What then? Are rich and handsome husbands so plentiful? Have the moralists ever had their way with youth and sex in their first turbulent hour?



CHAPTER VIII

This little scene with Sorell, described in the last chapter, was of great importance to Connie's after history. It had placed her suddenly on a footing of intimacy with a man of poetic and lofty character, and had transformed her old childish relation to him—which had alone made the scene possible—into something entirely different. It produced a singular effect upon her that such a man should care enough what befell her to dare to say what he had said to her. It had been—she admitted it—a lesson in scrupulousness, in high delicacy of feeling, in magnanimity. "You are trifling with what may be the life of another—just to amuse yourself—or to pay off a moment's offence. Only the stupid or cruel souls do such things—or think lightly of them. But not you—your mother's daughter!"

That had been the meaning of his sudden incursion. The more Connie thought of it, the more it thrilled her. It was both her charm and her weakness, at this moment, that she was so plastic, so responsive both for good and evil. She said to herself that she was fortunate to have such a friend; and she was conscious of a new and eager wish to win his praise, or to avoid his blame.

At the same time it did not occur to her to tell him anything of her escapade with Douglas Falloden. But the more closely she kept this to herself, the more eager she was to appease her conscience and satisfy Sorell, in the matter of Alice and Herbert Pryce. Her instinct showed her what to do, and Sorell watched her struggling with the results of her evening's flirtation with much secret amusement and applause. Herbert Pryce having been whistled on, had to be whistled off, and Alice had to be gently and gradually reassured; yet without any obvious penitence on Connie's part, which would only have inflicted additional wounds on Alice's sore spirit.

And Connie did it, broadly speaking, during the week of Falloden's schools. Sorell himself was busy every day and all day as one of the Greats examiners. He scarcely saw her for more than two half-hours during a hideously strenuous week, through which he sat immersed in the logic and philosophy papers of the disappearing generation of Honour men. Among the papers of the twenty or thirty men who were the certain Firsts of the year, he could not help paying a special attention to Douglas Falloden's. What a hard and glittering mind the fellow had!—extraordinarily competent and well-trained; extraordinarily lacking, as it seemed to Sorell, in width or pliancy, or humanity. One of the ablest essays sent in, however, was a paper by Falloden on the "Sentimentalisms of Democracy"—in which a reasoned and fierce contempt for the popular voice, and a brilliant glorification of war and of a military aristocracy, made very lively reading.

On the later occasion, when Sorell and Constance met during the week, he found Radowitz in the Hoopers' drawing-room. Sorell had gone in after dinner to consult with Ewen Hooper, one of his fellow examiners, over some doubtful papers, and their business done, the two men allowed themselves an interval of talk and music with the ladies before beginning work again till the small hours.

Constance, in diaphanous black, was at the piano, trying to recall, for Radowitz's benefit, some of the Italian folk-songs that had delighted the river-party. The room was full of a soft mingled light from the still uncurtained windows and the lamp which had been just brought in. It seemed to be specially concentrated on the hair, "golden like ripe corn," of the young musician, and on Connie's white neck and arms. Radowitz lay back in a low chair gazing at her with all his eyes.

On the further side of the room Nora was reading, Mrs. Hooper was busy with the newspaper, and Alice and Herbert Pryce were talking with the air of people who are, rather uncomfortably, making up a quarrel.

Sorell spent his half-hour mostly in conversation with Mrs. Hooper and Nora, while his inner mind wondered about the others. He stood with his back to the mantelpiece, his handsome pensive face, with its intensely human eyes, bent towards Nora, who was pouring out to him some grievances of the "home-students," to which he was courteously giving a jaded man's attention.

When he left the room Radowitz broke out—

"Isn't he like a god?"

Connie opened astonished eyes.

"Who?"

"My tutor—Mr. Sorell. Ah, you didn't notice—but you should. He is like the Hermes—only grown older, and with a soul. But there is no Greek sculptor who could have done him justice. It would have wanted a Praxiteles; but with the mind of Euripides!"

The boy's passionate enthusiasm pleased her. But she could think of nothing less conventional in reply than to ask if Sorell were popular in college.

"Oh, they like him well enough. They know what trouble he takes for them, and there's nobody dares cheek him. But they don't understand him. He's too shy. Wasn't it good fortune for me that he happens to be my friend?"

And he began to talk at headlong speed, and with considerable eloquence, of Sorell's virtues and accomplishments. Constance, who had been brought up in a southern country, liked the eloquence. Something in her was already tired of the slangy brevities that do duty in England for conversation. At the same time she thought she understood why Falloden, and Meyrick, and others called the youth a poseur, and angrily wished to snub him. He possessed besides, in-bred, all the foreign aids to the mere voice—gesticulation of hands and head, movements that to the Englishman are unexpected and therefore disagreeable. Also there, undeniably, was the frilled dress-shirt, and the two diamond studs, much larger and more conspicuous than Oxford taste allowed, which added to its criminality. And it was easy to see too that the youth was inordinately proud of his Polish ancestry, and inclined to rate all Englishmen as parvenus and shopkeepers.

"Was it in Paris you first made friends with Mr. Sorell?" Connie asked him.

Radowitz nodded.

"I was nineteen. My uncle had just died. I had nobody. You understand, my father was exiled twenty years ago. We belong to German Poland; though there has always been a branch of the family in Cracow. For more than a hundred years these vile Germans have been crushing and tormenting us. They have taken our land, they have tried to kill our language and our religion. But they can not. Our soul lives. Poland lives. And some day there will be a great war—and then Poland will rise again. From the East and the West and the South they will come—and the body that was hewn asunder will be young and glorious again." His blue eyes shone. "Some day, I will play you that in music. Chopin is full of it—the death of Poland—and then her soul, her songs, her hopes, her rising again. Ah, but Sorell!—I will explain. I saw him one night at a house of kind people—the master of it was the Directeur of the Ecole des Sciences Politiques—and his wife. She was so beautiful, though she was not young; and gentle, like a child; and so good. I was nothing to them—but I went to some lectures at the school, while I was still at the Conservatoire, and I used to go and play to them sometimes. So when my uncle died, they said, 'Come and stay with us.' I had really nobody. My father and mother died years ago. My mother, you understand, was half English; I always spoke English with her. She knew I must be a musician. That was settled when I was a child. Music is my life. But if I took it for a profession, she made me promise to see some other kinds of life first. She often said she would like me to go to Oxford. She had some old engravings of the colleges she used to show me. I am not a pauper, you see,—not at all. My family was once a very great family; and I have some money—not very much, but enough. So then Mr. Sorell and I began to talk. And I had suddenly the feeling—'If this man will tell me what to do, I will do it.' And then he found I was thinking of Oxford, and he said, if I came, he would be my friend, and look after me. And so he advised me to go to Marmion, because some of the tutors there were great friends of his. And that is why I went. And I have been there nearly a year."

"And you like it?" Connie, sitting hunched on the music-stool, her chin on her hand, was thinking of Falloden's outburst, and her own rebuff in Lathom Woods.

The boy shrugged his shoulders. He looked at Connie with his brilliant eyes, and she seemed to see that he was on the point of confiding in her, of complaining of his treatment, and then proudly checked himself.

"Oh, I like it well enough," he said carelessly. "I am reading classics. I love Greek. There is a soul in Greek. Latin—and Rome—that is too like the Germans! Now let me play to you—something from Poland."

He took her seat at the piano, and began to play—first in a dreamy and quiet way, passing from one plaintive folk-song to another; then gradually rising into passion, defiance, tragedy. Constance stood listening to him in amazement—entranced. Music was a natural language to her as it was to Radowitz, though her gift was so small and slight compared to his. But she understood and followed him; and there sprang up in her, as she sat turning her delicate face to the musician, that sudden, impassioned delight, that sense of fellowship with things vast and incommunicable—"exultations, agonies, and love, and man's unconquerable mind"—which it is the glorious function of music to kindle in the human spirit.



The twilight darkened. Every sound in the room but Radowitz's playing had ceased; even Mrs. Hooper had put down her newspaper. Nora, on the further side of the room, was absorbed in watching the two beautiful figures under the lamplight, the golden-haired musician and the listening girl.

Suddenly there was a noise of voices in the hall outside. The drawing-room door was thrown open, and the parlourmaid announced:

"Mr. Falloden."

Mrs. Hooper rose hastily. Radowitz wavered in a march finale he was improvising, and looked round.

"Oh, go on!" cried Constance.

But Radowitz ceased playing. He got up, with an angry shake of his wave of hair, muttered something about "another couple of hours' work" and closed the piano.

Constance remained sitting, as though unaware of the new arrival in the room.

"That was wonderful!" she said, with a long breath, her eyes raised to Radowitz. "Now I shall go and read Polish history!"

A resonant voice said:

"Hullo—Radowitz! Good-evening, Lady Connie. Isn't this a scandalous time to call? But I came about the ball-tickets for next Wednesday—to ask how many your aunt wants. There seems to be an unholy rush on them."

Connie put out a careless hand.

"How do you do? We've been having the most divine music! Next Wednesday? Oh, yes, I remember!" And as she recovered her hand from Falloden, she drew it across her eyes, as though trying to dispel the dream in which Radowitz's playing had wrapped her. Then the hand dropped, and she saw the drawing-room door closing on the player.

Falloden looked down upon her with a sarcastic mouth, which, however, worked nervously.

"I'm extremely sorry to bring you down to earth. I suppose he's awfully good."

"It's genius," said Connie, breathlessly—"just that—genius! I had no idea he had such a gift." Falloden shrugged his shoulders without reply. He threw himself into a chair beside her, his knees crossed, his hands on the topmost knee, with the finger-tips lightly touching, an attitude characteristic of him. The lamp which had been brought in to light the piano shone full upon him, and Constance perceived that, in spite of his self-confident ease of bearing, he looked haggard and pale with the long strain of the schools. Her own manner relaxed.

"Have you really done?" she asked, more graciously.

"I was in for my last paper this afternoon. I am now a free man."

"And you've got your First?"

He laughed.

"That only the gods know. I may just squeak into it."

"And now you've finished with Oxford?"

"Oh, dear, no! There's a fortnight more. One keeps the best—for the last."

"Then your people are coming up again for Commem.?" The innocence of the tone was perfect.

His sparkling eyes met hers.

"I have no domestic prospects of that sort," he said drily. "What I shall do with this fortnight depends entirely—on one person."

The rest of the room seemed full of a buzz of conversation which left them unobserved. Connie had taken up her large lace fan and was slowly opening and closing it. The warm pallor of her face and throat, the golden brown of her hair, the grace of her neck and shoulders, enchanted the man beside her. For three weeks he had been holding desire in check with a strong hand. The tide of it rushed back upon him, with the joy of a released force. But he knew that he must walk warily.

"Will you please give me some orders?" he went on, smiling, seeing that she did not reply. "How has the mare been behaving?"

"She is rather tame—a little too much of the sheep in her composition."

"She wants a companion. So do I—badly. There is a little village beyond the Lathom Woods—which has a cottage—for tea—and a strawberry garden. Shall we sample it?"

Constance shook her head laughing.

"We haven't an hour. Everybody asks us to parties, all day and all night long. London is a joke to Oxford."

"Don't go!" said Falloden impatiently. "I have been asked to meet you—three times—at very dull houses. But I shall go, of course, unless I can persuade you to do something more amusing."

"Oh, dear, no! We're in for it. But I thought people came here to read books?"

"They do read a few; but when one has done with them one feels towards them like enemies whom one has defeated—and insults. I chucked my Greek lexicon under the sofa, first thing, when I got back from the schools this afternoon."

"Wasn't that childish—rather? I am appalled to think how much you know."

He laughed impatiently.

"Now one may begin to learn something. Oxford is precious little use. But it's not worth while being beaten—in anything. Shall we say Thursday, then?—for our ride?"

Constance opened her eyes in pretended astonishment.

"After the ball? Shall I be awake? Let's settle it on Wednesday!"

He could get no more definite promise from her, and must needs take his leave. Before he went, he asked her to keep the first four dances for him at the Marmion ball, and two supper-dances. But Constance evaded a direct assent. She would do her best. But she had promised some to Mr. Pryce, and some to Mr. Radowitz.

Falloden's look darkened.

"You should not allow him to dance with you," he said imperiously. "He is too eccentric. He doesn't know how to behave; and he makes his partners conspicuous."

Constance too had risen, and they confronted each other—she all wilfulness.

"I shall certainly dance with him!" she said, with a little determined air. "You see, I like foreign ways!"

He said good night abruptly. As he stood a few minutes on the further side of the room, making a few last arrangements as to the ball with Mrs. Hooper and Alice, Constance, still standing by the piano, and apparently chatting with Herbert Pryce, was really aware of Falloden's every movement. His manner to her aunt was brusque and careless; and he forgot, apparently, to say good night either to Alice or Nora. Nobody in the room, as she well knew, except herself, found any pleasure in his society. Nora's hostile face in the background was a comic study. And yet, so long as he was there, nobody could forget or overlook him; so splendid was the physical presence of the man, and so strong the impression of his personality—even in trivial things.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, everybody in the house had gone to bed, except Nora and her father. She had lit a little fire in his study, as the night had grown chilly; she had put a little tray with tea on it by his side, and helped him to arrange the Greats papers, in which he was still immersed, under his hand. And finally she brought his pipe and filled it for him.

"Must you sit up long, father?"

"An hour or two," said Ewen Hooper wearily. "I wish I didn't get so limp. But these Honour exams take it out of one. And I have to go to Winchester to-morrow."

"For the scholarship?"

He nodded.

"Father! you work a great deal too hard—you look dog-tired!" cried Nora in distress. "Why do you do so much?"

He shook his head sadly.

"You know, darling."

Nora did know. She knew that every pound was of importance to the household, that the temporary respite caused by the legacy from Lord Risborough and by Connie's prepayment would very soon come to an end, and that her father seemed to be more acutely aware of the position than he had yet been. Her own cleverness, and the higher education she was steadily getting for herself enabled her to appreciate, as no one else in the family could or did, her father's delicate scholarly gifts, which had won him his reputation in Oxford and outside. But the reputation might have been higher, if so much time had not been claimed year after year by the sheer pressure of the family creditors. With every year, Nora had grown up into a fuller understanding of her father's tragedy; a more bitter, a more indignant understanding. They might worry through; one way or another she supposed they would worry through. But her father's strength and genius were being sacrificed. And this child of seventeen did not see how to stop it.

After she had brought him his pipe, and he was drawing at it contentedly over the fire, she stood silent beside him, bursting with something she could not make up her mind to say. He put out an arm, as she stood beside his chair, and drew her to him.

"Dear little Trotty Veck!" It had been his pet name for her as a child. Nora, for answer, bent her head, and kissed him.

"Father"—she broke out—"I've got my first job!"

He looked up enquiringly.

"Mr. Hurst"—she named her English Literature tutor, a fellow of Marmion—"has got it for me. I've been doing some Norman-French with him; and there's a German professor has asked him to get part of a romance copied that's in the Bodleian—the only manuscript. And Mr. Hurst says he'll coach me—I can easily do it—and I shall get ten pounds!"

"Well done, Trotty Veck!" Ewen Hooper smiled at her affectionately. "But won't it interfere with your work?"

"Not a bit. It will help it. Father!—I'm going to earn a lot before long. If it only didn't take such a long time to grow up!" said Nora impatiently. "One ought to be as old as one feels—and I feel quite twenty-one!"

Ewen Hooper shook his head.

"That's all wrong. One should be young—and taste being young, every moment, every day that one can. I wish I'd done it—now that I'm getting old."

"You're not old!" cried Nora. "You're not, father! You're not to say it!"

And kneeling down by him, she laid her cheek against his shoulder, and put one of his long gaunt hands to her lips.

Her affection was very sweet to him, but it could not comfort him. There are few things, indeed, in which the old can be comforted by the young—the old, who know too much, both of life and themselves.

But he pulled himself together.

"Dear Trotty Veck, you must go to bed, and let me do my work. But—one moment!" He laid a hand on her shoulder, and abruptly asked her whether she thought her Cousin Constance was in love with Douglas Falloden. "Your mother's always talking to me about it," he said, with a wearied perplexity.

"I don't know," said Nora, frowning. "But I shouldn't wonder."

"Then I shall have to make some enquiries," said Connie's guardian, with resignation. "She's a masterful young woman. But she can be very sweet when she likes. Do you see what she gave me to-day?"

He pointed to a beautiful Viennese edition of Aeschylus, in three sumptuous volumes, which had just appeared and was now lying on the Reader's table.

Nora took it up with a cry of pleasure. She had her father's passion for books.

"She heard me say to Sorell, apparently, that I would give my eyes for it, and couldn't afford it. That was a week ago. And to-day, after luncheon, she stole in here like a mouse—you none of you saw or heard her—holding the books behind her—and looking as meek as milk. You would have thought she was a child, coming to say she was sorry! And she gave me the books in the prettiest way—just like her mother!—as though all the favour came from me. I'm beginning to be very fond of her. She's so nice to your old father. I say, Nora!"—he held her again—"you and I have got to prevent her from marrying the wrong man!"

Nora shook her head, with an air of middle-aged wisdom.

"Connie will marry whomever she has a mind to!" she said firmly. "And it's no good, father, you imagining anything else."

Ewen Hooper laughed, released her, and sent her to bed.

The days that followed represented the latter part of the interval between the Eights and Commemoration, before Oxford plunged once more into high festival.

It was to be a brilliant Commem.; for an ex-Viceroy of India, a retired Ambassador, England's best General, and five or six foreign men of science and letters, of rather exceptional eminence, were coming to get their honorary degrees. When Mrs. Hooper, Times in hand, read out at the breakfast-table the names of Oxford's expected guests, Constance Bledlow looked up in surprised amusement. It seemed the Ambassador and she were old friends; that she had sat on his knee as a baby through various Carnival processions in the Corso, showing him how to throw confetti; and that he and Lady F. had given a dance at the Embassy for her coming-out, when Connie, at seventeen, and His Excellency—still the handsomest man in the room, despite years and gout—had danced the first waltz together, and a subsequent minuet; which—though Connie did not say so—had been the talk of Rome.

As to the ex-Viceroy, he was her father's first cousin, and had passed through Rome on his way east, staying three or four days at the Palazzo Barberini. Constance, however, could not be induced to trouble her head about him. "He bored Mamma and me dreadfully," she said—"he had seven pokers up his back, and was never human for a minute. I don't want to see him at all." Oxford, however, seemed to be of the opinion that ex-viceroys do want to see their cousins; for the Hooper party found themselves asked as a matter of course to the All Souls' luncheon, the Vice-Chancellor's garden-party, and to a private dinner-party in Christ Church on the day of the Encaenia, at which all the new-made doctors were to be present. As for the ball-tickets for Commem. week, they poured in; and meanwhile there were endless dinner-parties, and every afternoon had its river picnic, now on the upper, now on the lower river.

It was clear, indeed, both to her relations and to Oxford in general, that Constance Bledlow was to be the heroine of the moment. She would be the "star" of Commem., as so many other pretty or charming girls had been before her. But in her case, it was no mere undergraduate success. Old and young alike agreed to praise her. Her rank inevitably gave her precedence at almost every dinner-party, Oxford society not being rich in the peerage. The host, who was often the head of a college and grey-haired, took her in; and some other University big-wig, equally mature, flanked her on the right. When she was undressing in her little room after these entertainments, she would give Annette a yawning or plaintive account of them. "You know, Annette, I never talk to anybody under fifty now!" But at the time she never failed to play her part. She was born with the wish to please, which, as every one knows, makes three parts of the art of pleasing.

Meanwhile Sorell, who was at all times a very popular man, in great request, accepted many more invitations than usual in order to see as much as he could of this triumphal progress of Lady Risborough's daughter. Oxford society was then much more limited than now, and he and she met often. It seemed to him whenever he came across Douglas Falloden in Connie's company during these days, that the young man's pursuit of Constance, if it was a pursuit, was making no progress at all, and that his temper suffered accordingly. Connie's endless engagements were constantly in the way. Sorell thought he detected once or twice that Falloden had taken steps to procure invitations to houses where Constance was expected; but when they did meet it was evident that he got but a small share of her attention.

Once Sorell saw them in what appeared intimate conversation at a Christ Church party. Falloden—who was flushed and frowning—was talking rapidly in a low voice; and Constance was listening to him with a look half soft, half mocking. Her replies seemed to irritate her companion, for they parted abruptly, Constance looking back to smile a sarcastic good-bye.

Again, on the Sunday before the Encaenia, a famous high churchman preached in the University church. The church was densely crowded, and Sorell, sitting in the masters' seats under the pulpit, saw Constance dimly, in the pews reserved for wives and families of the University doctors and masters, beneath the gallery. Immediately to her right, in the very front of the undergraduates' gallery, he perceived the tall form and striking head of Douglas Falloden; and when the sermon was over he saw that the young man was one of the first to push his way out.

"He hopes to waylay her," thought Sorell.

If so, he was unsuccessful. Sorell emerging with the stream into the High Street saw Connie's black and white parasol a little ahead. Falloden was on the point of overtaking her, when Radowitz, the golden-haired, the conspicuous, crossed his path. Constance looked round, smiled, shook hands with Radowitz, and apparently not seeing Falloden in her rear, walked on, in merry talk with the beaming musician. Sorell, perhaps, was the only person who noticed the look of pale fury with which Falloden dropped out of the crowded pathway, crossed the street, and entered a smart club opposite, exclusively frequented by "bloods."

Commem. week itself, however, would give a man in love plenty of chances. Sorell was well aware of it. Monday dawned with misty sunshine after much rain. In the Turl after luncheon, Sorell met Nora Hooper hurrying along with note-books under her arm. They turned down Brasenose Lane together, and she explained that she was on her way to the Bodleian where she was already at work on her first paid job. Her pleasure in it, and the childish airs she gave herself in regard to it, touched and amused Sorell, with whom—through the Greek lessons—she had become a great favourite.

As they parted at the doorway leading to the Bodleian, she said with a mischievous look—

"Did you know Mr. Falloden's party is off?"

And she explained that for the following day, Falloden had arranged the most elaborate and exclusive of river-parties, with tea in the private gardens of a famous house, ten miles from Oxford. His mother and sister had been coming down for it, and he had asked other people from London.

"It was all for Connie—and Connie's had to scratch! And Mr. Falloden has put it all off. He says his mother, Lady Laura, has a chill and can't come, but every one knows—it's Connie!"

She and Sorell smiled at each other. They had never had many words on the subject, but they understood each other perfectly.

"What made her scratch?" asked Sorell, wondering.

"Royalties," said Nora shortly, with a democratic nose in air.

It appeared that a certain travelled and artistic Princess had been spending the week-end in a ducal house in the neighbourhood. So, too, had the ex-Viceroy. And hearing from him that the only daughter "of those dear Risboroughs" was at Oxford, twelve miles off, her Royal Highness, through him, had "commanded" Constance for tea under the ducal roof on Tuesday. A carriage was to be sent for her, and the ex-Viceroy undertook to convey her back to Oxford afterwards, he being due himself to dine and sleep at the Vice-Chancellor's the night before the Encaenia.

"Constance didn't want to go a bit. She was dreadfully annoyed. But father and mother made her. So she sent a note to Mr. Falloden, and he came round. She was out, but Alice saw him. Alice says he scarcely said a word, but you could feel he was in a towering rage."

"Poor Falloden!" said Sorell.

Nora's eyes twinkled.

"Yes, but so good for him! I'm sure he's always throwing over other people. Now he knows

"'Golden lads and lasses must Like chimney-sweepers come to dust.'"

"Vandal!" cried Sorell—"to twist such a verse!"

Nora laughed, threw him a friendly nod, and vanished up the steps of the Bodleian.

But Falloden's hour came!

The Encaenia went off magnificently. Connie, sitting beside Mrs. Hooper in the semicircle of the Sheldonian Theatre, drew the eyes of the crowd of graduates as they surged into the arena, and tantalised the undergraduates in the gallery, above the semicircle, who were well aware that the "star" was there, but could not see her. As the new doctors' procession entered through the lane made for it by the bedells, as the whole assembly rose, and as the organ struck up, amid the clapping and shouting of the gods in the gallery, Connie and the grey-haired Ambassador, who was walking second in the red and yellow line, grinned openly at each other, while the ex-Viceroy in front, who had been agreeably flattered by the effect produced by his girl-cousin in the august circles of the day before, nodded and smiled at the young lady in the white plumes and pale mauve dress.

"Do you know my cousin, Lady Constance Bledlow?—the girl in mauve there?" he said, complacently in the ear of the Public Orator, as they stood waiting till the mingled din from the organ and the undergraduates' gallery overhead should subside sufficiently to allow that official to begin his arduous task of introducing the doctors-elect.

The Public Orator, in a panic lest one of the Latin puns in his forthcoming address should escape him, said hurriedly—"Yes!"—and then "No"—being quite uncertain to which girl in mauve the great man referred, and far too nervous to find out. The great man smiled, and looked up blandly at the shrieking gallery overhead, wondering—as all persons in his position do wonder in each succeeding generation—whether the undergraduates were allowed to make quite such an infernal noise when he was "up."

Meanwhile, Constance herself was only conscious of one face and figure in the crowded theatre. Falloden had borrowed a master's gown, and as the general throng closed up behind the doctors' procession, he took up a position in the rear, just in front of the great doors under the organ loft, which, as the day was very hot, remained unclosed. His dark head and athlete's figure, scarcely disguised by the ampler folds of the borrowed gown, showed in picturesque relief against the grey and sunlit background of the beautiful Divinity School, which could be seen through the doorway. Constance knew that his eyes were on her; and she guessed that he was only conscious of her, as she at that moment was only conscious of him. And again that tremor, that premonition of some coming attack upon her will which she half dreaded, and half desired, swept over her. What was there in the grave and slightly frowning face that drew her through all repulsion? She studied it. Surely the brow and eyes were beautiful—shaped for high thought, and generous feeling? It was the disdainful sulky mouth, the haughty carriage of the head, that spoilt a noble aspect. Yet she had seen the mouth quiver into softness; and those broad shoulders had once stood between her and danger—possibly death. Her heart trembled. "What do you want of me?" it was asking—helplessly—of the distant man; "and can I—dare I—give it?"

Then her thoughts flew onward to the ball of the evening, for it was the night of the Marmion ball. No more escape! If she went—and nothing should prevent her from going—it would be Falloden's evening, Falloden's chance. She had been perfectly conscious of evading and thwarting him during the previous week. There had been some girlish mischief, but more excitement in it. Now, would he take his revenge?

Her heart beat fast. She had never yet danced with him. To-night she would feel his arm round her in the convention of the waltz. And she knew that for her it would be no convention; but something either to be passionately accepted—or impatiently endured.

* * * * *

Oxford went early to the Marmion ball. It was a very popular gathering. So that before ten o'clock the green quadrangle was crowded with guests waiting to see other guests come in; while the lights from the Gothic hall, and the notes of the "Blue Danube," then in its first prime, flung out their call to youth and sex.

In they thronged—young men and maidens—a gay procession through the lawns and quadrangles, feeling the world born anew for them, and for them only, as their fathers and mothers had felt before them.

Falloden and Meyrick, with half a dozen other chosen spirits, met Constance at the entrance and while Mrs. Hooper and Alice followed, pleased against their will by the reflected fame which had fallen upon them also, the young men formed a body-guard round Constance, and escorted her like a queen to the hall.

Sorell, eagerly waiting, watched her entrance into the beautiful and spacious room, with its throng of dancers. She came in, radiant, with that aureole of popular favour floating round her, which has so much to do with the loveliness of the young. All the world smiled on her; she smiled in return; and that sarcastic self behind the smile, which Nora's quick sense was so often conscious of, seemed to have vanished. She carried, Sorell saw, a glorious bunch of pale roses. Were they Falloden's gift?

That Douglas Falloden danced with her repeatedly, that they sat out together through most of the supper-dances, that there was a sheltered corner in the illuminated quad, beside the Graeco-Roman fountain which an archaeological warden had given to the college, where, involuntarily, his troubled eyes discovered them more than once:—this at least Sorell knew, and could not help knowing. He saw that she danced twice with Radowitz, and that Falloden stood meanwhile in the doorway of the hall, twisting his black moustache, and chaffing Meyrick, yet all the time with an eye on the ballroom. And during one long disappearance, he found himself guessing that Falloden had taken her to the library for greater seclusion. Only a very few people seemed to know that the fine old room was open.

"Where is Connie?" said poor Mrs. Hooper fretfully—when three o'clock had long struck. "I can't keep awake!"

* * * * *

And now a midsummer sun was rising over Oxford. The last carriage had rumbled through the streets; the last merry group of black-coated men, and girls in thin shoes and opera-cloaks had vanished. The summer dawn held the whole beautiful and silenced city in its peace.

Constance, in her dressing-gown, sat at the open window, looking out over the dewy garden, and vaguely conscious of its scents as one final touch of sweetness in a whole of pleasure which was still sending its thrill through all her pulses.

At last, she found pen and paper on her writing-table, and wrote an instruction for Annette upon it.

* * * * *

"Please send early for the horses. They should be here at a quarter to nine. Call me at eight. Tell Aunt Ellen that I have gone for a ride, and shall be back by eleven. It was quite a nice ball."

* * * * *

Then, with a silent laugh at the last words, she took the sheet of paper, stole noiselessly out of her room, and up the stairs to Annette's room, where she pushed the message under the door. Annette had not been well the day before, and Connie had peremptorily forbidden her to sit up.



CHAPTER IX

The day was still young in Lathom Woods. A wood-cutter engaged in cutting coppice on the wood's eastern skirts, hearing deep muffled sounds from "Tom" clock-tower, borne to him from Oxford on the light easterly breeze, stopped to count the strokes.

Ten o'clock.

He straightened himself, wiped the sweat from his brow, and was immediately aware of certain other sounds approaching from the wood itself. Horses—at a walk. No doubt the same gentleman and lady who had passed him an hour earlier, going in a contrary direction.

He watched them as they passed him again, repeating his reflection that they were a "fine-lookin' couple"—no doubt sweethearts. What else should bring a young man and a young woman riding in Lathom Woods at that time in the morning? "Never seed 'em doin' it before, anyways."

Connie threw the old man a gracious "Good morning!"—to which he guardedly responded, looking full at her, as he stood leaning on his axe.

"I wonder what the old fellow is thinking about us!" she said lightly, when they had moved forward. Then she flushed, conscious that the remark had been ill-advised.

Falloden, who was sitting erect and rather sombre, his reins lying loosely on his horse's neck, said slowly—

"He is probably thinking all sorts of foolish things, which aren't true. I wish they were."

Connie's eyes were shining with a suppressed excitement.

"He supposes at any rate we have had a good time, and in fact—we haven't. Is that what you mean?"

"If you like to put it so."

"And we haven't had a good time, because—unfortunately—we've quarrelled!"

"I should describe it differently. There are certain proofs and tests of friendship that any friend may ask for. But when they are all refused—"

"Friendship itself is strained!" laughed Constance, looking round at her companion. She was breathing quickly. "In other words, we have been quarrelling—about Radowitz—and there seems no way of making it up."

"You have only to promise me the very little thing I asked," said Falloden stiffly.

"That I shouldn't dance with him to-night, or again this week? You call that a little thing?"

"I should have thought it a small thing, compared—"

He turned and faced her. His dark eyes were full of proud agitation—of things unspoken. But she met them undaunted.

"Compared to—friendship?"

He was silent, but his eyes held her.

"Well then"—said Constance—"let me repeat that—in my opinion, friendship which asks unreasonable things—is not friendship—but tyranny!"

She drew herself up passionately, and gave a smart touch with her whip to the mare's flank, who bounded forward, and had to be checked by Falloden's hand on her bridle.

"Don't get run away with, while you are denouncing me!" he said, smiling, as they pulled up.

"I really didn't want any help!" said Constance, panting. "I could have stopped her quite easily."

"I doubt it. She is really not the lamb you think her!"

"Nor is her mistress: I return the remark."

"Which has no point. Because only a mad-man—"

"Could have dreamed of comparing me—to anything soft and docile?" laughed Constance.

There was another silence. Before them at the end of a long green vista the gate opening on the main road could be seen.

Constance broke it. "Wounded pride, and stubborn will were hot within her.

"Well, it is a great pity we should have been sparring like this. I can't remember who began it. But now I suppose I may do what I like with the dances I promised you?"

"I keep no one to their word who means to break it," said Falloden coldly.

Constance grew suddenly white.

"That"—she said quietly—"was unpardonable!"

"It was. I retract it."

"No. You have said it—which means that you could think it. That decides it."

They rode on in silence. As they neared the gate, Constance, whose face showed agitation and distress, said abruptly—

"Of course I know I must seem very ungrateful—"

A sound, half bitter, half scornful from Falloden stopped her. She threw her head back defiantly.

"All the same I could be grateful enough, in my own way, if you would let me. But what you don't understand is that men can't lord it over women now as they used to do. You say—you"—she stammered a little—"you love me. I don't know yet—what I feel. I feel many different things. But I know this: A man who forbids me to do this and that—to talk to this person—or dance with some one else—a man who does not trust and believe in me—if I were ever so much in love with him, I would not marry him! I should feel myself a coward and a slave!"

"One is always told"—said Falloden hoarsely—"that love makes it easy to grant even the most difficult things. And I have begged the merest trifle."

"'Begged'?" said Constance, raising her eyebrows. "You issued a decree. I am not to dance with Radowitz—and I am not to see so much of Mr. Sorell—if I am to keep your—friendship. I demurred. You repeated it—as though you were responsible for what I do, and had a right to command me. Well, that does not suit me. I am perfectly free, and I have given you no right to arrange my life for me. So now let us understand each other."

Falloden shrugged his shoulders.

"You have indeed made it perfectly plain!"

"I meant to," said Constance vehemently.

But they could not keep their eyes from each other. Both were pale. In both the impulse to throw away pride and hold out a hand of yielding was all but strong enough to end their quarrel. Both suffered, and if the truth were told, both were standing much deeper than before in the midstream of passion.

But neither spoke another word—till the gate was reached.

Falloden opened it, and backed his horse out of Connie's way. In the road outside, at a little distance, the groom was waiting.

"Good-bye," said Falloden, with ceremonious politeness. "I wish I had not spoilt your ride. Please do not give up riding in the woods, because you might be burdened with my company. I shall never intrude upon you. All the woodmen and keepers have been informed that you have full permission. The family will be all away till the autumn. But the woodmen will look after you, and give you no trouble."

"Thank you!" said Constance, lightly, staying the mare for a moment. "But surely some of the rides will be wanted directly for the pheasants? Anyway I think I shall try the other side of Oxford. They say Bagley is delightful. Good-bye!"

She passed through, made a signal to Joseph, and was soon trotting fast towards Oxford.

* * * * *

On that return ride, Constance could not conceal from herself that she was unhappy. Her lips quivered, her eyes had much ado to keep back the onset of tears—now that there was no Falloden to see her, or provoke her. How brightly their ride had begun!—how miserably it had ended! She thought of that first exhilaration; the early sun upon the wood; the dewy scents of moss and tree; Falloden's face of greeting—"How can you look so fresh! You can't have slept more than four hours—and here you are! Wonderful! 'Did ever Dian so become a grove'—"

An ominous quotation, if she had only remembered at the time where it came from! For really his ways were those of a modern Petruchio—ways that no girl of any decent spirit could endure.

Yet how frank and charming had been his talk as they rode into the wood!—talk of his immediate plans, which he seemed to lay at her feet, asking for her sympathy and counsel; of his father and his two sisters; of the Hoopers even. About them, his new tone was no doubt a trifle patronising, but still, quite tolerable. Ewen Hooper, he vowed, was "a magnificent scholar," and it was too bad that Oxford had found nothing better for him than "a scrubby readership." But "some day, of course, he'll have the regius professorship." Nora was "a plucky little thing—though she hates me!" And he, Falloden, was not so sure after all that Miss Alice would not land her Pryce. "Can't we bring it about?"

And Falloden ran, laughing, through a catalogue of his own smart or powerful relations, speculating what could be done. It was true, wasn't it, that Pryce was anxious to turn his back on Oxford and the higher mathematics, and to try his luck in journalism, or politics? Well, Falloden happened to know that an attractive post in the Conservative Central Office would soon be vacant; an uncle of his was a very important person on the Council; that and other wires might be pulled. Constance, eagerly, began to count up her own opportunities of the same kind; and between them, they had soon—in imagination—captured the post. Then, said Falloden, it would be for Constance to clinch the matter. No man could do such a thing decently. Pryce would have to be told—"'The world's your oyster—but before you open it, you will kindly go and propose to my cousin!—which of course you ought to have done months ago!'"

And so laughing and plotting like a couple of children they had gone rambling through the green rides and glades of the wood, occasionally putting their horses to the gallop, that the pulse of life might run still faster.

But a later topic of conversation had brought them into even closer contact. Connie spoke of her proposed visit to her aunts. Falloden, radiant, could not conceal his delight.

"You will be only five miles from us. Of course you must come and stay at Flood! My mother writes they have collected a jolly party for the 12th. I will tell her to write to you at once. You must come! You must! Will you promise?"

And Constance, wondering at her own docility, had practically promised. "I want you to know my people—I want you to know my father!" And as he plunged again into talk about his father, the egotistical man of fashion disappeared; she seemed at last to have reached something sincere and soft, and true.

And then—what had begun the jarring? Was it—first—her account of her Greek lessons with Sorell? Before she knew what had happened, the brow beside her had clouded, the voice had changed. Why did she see so much of Sorell? He, like Radowitz, was a poseur—a wind-bag. That was what made the attraction between them. If she wished to learn Greek—

"Let me teach you!" And he had bent forward, with his most brilliant and imperious look, his hand upon her reins.

But Constance, surprised and ruffled, had protested that Sorell had been her mother's dear friend, and was now her own. She could not and would not give up her lessons. Why indeed should she?

"Because friends"—Falloden had laid a passionate emphasis on the word—"must have some regard—surely—to each other's likes and dislikes. If you have an enemy, tell me—he or she shall be mine—instantly! Sorell dislikes me. You will never hear any good of me from him. And, of course, Radowitz hates me. I have given him good cause. Promise—at least—that you will not dance with Radowitz again. You don't know what I suffered last night. He has the antics of a monkey!"

Whereupon the quarrel between them had broken like thunder, Constance denouncing the arrogance and unkindness that could ask such promises of her; Falloden steadily, and with increasing bitterness, pressing his demand.

And so to the last scene between them, at the gate.

Was it a breach?—or would it all be made up that very night at the Magdalen ball?

No!—it was and should be a breach! Constance fought back her tears, and rode proudly home.

* * * * *

"What are you going to wear to-night?" said Nora, putting her head in at Constance's door. Constance was lying down by Annette's strict command, in preparation for her second ball, which was being given by Magdalen, where the college was reported to have surpassed itself in the lavishness of all the preparations made for lighting up its beautiful walks and quadrangles.

Constance pointed languidly to the sofa, where a creation in white silk and tulle, just arrived from London, had been laid out by the reverential hands of Annette.

"Why on earth does one go to balls?" said Constance, gloomily pressing both hands upon a pair of aching temples.

Nora shut the door behind her, and came to the side of the bed.

"It's time to dress," she said firmly. "Alice says you had a succes fou last night."

"Go away, and don't talk nonsense!" Constance turned on her side, and shut her eyes.

"Oh, Alice hadn't a bad time either!" said Nora, complacently, sitting on the bed. "Herbert Pryce seems to have behaved quite decently. Shall I tell you something?" The laughing girl stooped over Connie, and said in her ear—"Now that Herbert knows it would be no good proposing to you, he thinks it might be a useful thing to have you for a relation."

"Don't be horrid!" said Constance. "If I were Alice—"

"You'd punch my head?" Nora laughed. "All very well. But Alice doesn't much care why Herbert Pryce marries her, so long as he does marry her."

Constance did not reply. She continued to feign a headache. But all the time she was thinking of the scene in the wood that morning, when she and Falloden had—to amuse themselves—plotted the rise in life, and the matrimonial happiness, of Herbert and Alice. How little they had cared for what they talked about! They talked only that they might laugh together—hear each other's voices, look into each other's eyes—

"Where did you ride this morning?" said Nora suddenly.

"Somewhere out towards Godstowe," said Constance vaguely.

"I saw Mr. Falloden riding down the High this morning, when I was on the way to the Bodleian. He just looks splendid on horseback—I must give him that. Why doesn't he ride with you sometimes, as he chose your horse?"

"I understand the whole of Oxford would have a fit if a girl went out riding with an undergraduate," said Constance, her voice muffled in the pillow. Then, after a moment she sprang up, and began to brush her hair.

"Mr. Falloden's not an undergraduate now. He can do what he likes," said Nora.

Constance made no reply. Nora observed her with a pair of shrewd brown eyes.

"There are two bouquets for you downstairs," she said abruptly.

Constance turned round startled, almost hidden by the thick veil of her brown hair.

"Who's sent them?"

"One comes from Mr. Radowitz—a beauty. The other's from Lord Meyrick. Isn't he a jolly boy?"

Constance turned back to the dressing-table, disappointed. She had half expected another name. And yet she would have felt insulted if Falloden had dared to send her flowers that evening, without a word of apology—of regret for their happy hour, spoilt by his absurd demands.

"Well, I can't carry them both; and one will be offended."

"Oh, you must take Radowitz's!" cried Nora. "Just to show that you stand by him. Mr. Sorell says everybody likes him in college—except Mr. Falloden's horrid set, who think themselves the lords of creation. They say that Otto Radowitz made such an amusing speech last week in the college debating society attacking 'the bloods.' Of course they didn't hear it, because they have their own club, and turn up their nose at the college society. But it's going to be printed somewhere, and then it'll make them still more furious with him. They'll certainly pay him out some time."

"All right," said Constance, who had suddenly recovered colour and vivacity. "I'll take Mr. Radowitz's bouquet."

"Then, of course, Lord Meyrick will feel snubbed. Serve him right! He shouldn't be so absurdly fond of Mr. Falloden!"

Nora was quite aware that she might be provoking Constance. She did it with her eyes open. Her curiosity and concern after what Alice had told her of the preceding night's ball were becoming hard to conceal. Would Connie really engage herself to that horrid man?

But no rise could be got out of Constance. She said nothing. Annette appeared, and the important business of hair-dressing went forward. Nora, however, had yet another fly to throw.

"Alice passed Mr. Falloden on the river this afternoon—he was with the Mansons, and another lady, an awfully pretty person. Mr. Falloden was teaching her to row. Nobody knew who she was. But she and he seemed great friends. Alice saw them also walking about together at Iffley, while the others were having tea."