"A girl can't ride alone in Oxford--she'd be talked about at once!"

Lady Connie flushed mutinously.

"I could take a groom, Aunt Ellen!"

"Well, I don't approve of it," said Mrs. Hooper, in the half plaintive tone of one who must speak although no one listens. "But of course your uncle must decide."

"We'll talk it over, my dear Connie, we'll talk it over," said Dr.

Hooper cheerfully. "Now wouldn't you like Nora to show you to your room?"

The girls went upstairs together, Nora leading the way.

"It's an awful squash in your room," said Nora abruptly. "I don't know how you'll manage."

"My fault, I suppose, for bringing so many things! But where else could I put them?"

Nora nodded gravely, as though considering the excuse. The newcomer suddenly felt herself criticised by this odd schoolgirl and resented it.

The door of the spare-room was open, and the girls entered upon a scene of chaos. Annette rose from her knees, showing a brick-red countenance of wrath that strove in vain for any sort of dignity. And again that look of distant laughter came into Lady Connie's eyes.

"My dear Annette, why aren't you having a rest, as I told you! I can do with anything to-night."

"Well, my lady, if you'll tell me how you'll get into bed, unless I put some of these things away, I should be obliged!" said Annette, with a dark look at Nora. "I've asked for a wardrobe for you, and this young lady says there isn't one. There's that hanging cupboard"--she pointed witheringly to the curtained recess--"your dresses will be ruined there in a fortnight. And there's that chest of drawers. Your things will have to stay in the trunks, as far as I can see, and then you might as well sleep on them. It would give you more room!"

With which stroke of sarcasm, Annette returned to the angry unpacking of her mistress's bag.

"I must buy a wardrobe," said Connie, looking round her in perplexity.

"Never mind, Annette, I can easily buy one."

It was now Nora's turn to colour.

"You mustn't do that," she said firmly. "Father wouldn't like it. We'll find something. But do you want such a lot of things?"

She looked at the floor heaped with every variety of delicate mourning, black dresses, thick and thin, for morning and afternoon; and black and white, or pure white, for the evening. And what had happened to the bed?

It was already divested of the twilled cotton sheets and marcella quilt which were all the Hoopers ever allowed either to themselves or their guests. They had been replaced by sheets 'of the finest and smoothest linen, embroidered with a crest and monogram in the corners, and by a coverlet of old Italian lace lined with pale blue silk; while the down pillows at the head with their embroidered and lace-trimmed slips completed the transformation of what had been a bed, and was now almost a work of art.

And the dressing-table! Nora went up to it in amazement. It too was spread with lace lined with silk, and covered with a toilet-set of mother-of-pearl and silver. Every brush and bottle was crested and initialled. The humble looking-gla.s.s, which Nora, who was something of a carpenter, had herself mended before her cousin's arrival, was standing on the floor in a corner, and a folding mirror framed in embossed silver had taken its place.

"I say, do you always travel with these things?" The girl stood open-mouthed, half astonished, half contemptuous.

"What things?"

Nora pointed to the toilet-table and the bed.

Connie's expression showed an answering astonishment.

"I have had them all my life," she said stiffly. "We always took our own linen to hotels, and made our rooms nice."

"I should think you'd be afraid of their being stolen!" Nora took up one of the costly brushes, and examined it in wonder.

"Why should I be? They're nothing. They're just like other people's!"

With a slight but haughty change of manner, the girl turned away, and began to talk Italian to her maid.

"I never saw anything like them!" said Nora stoutly.

Constance Bledlow took no notice. She and Annette were chattering fast, and Nora could not understand a word. She stood by awkward and superfluous, feeling certain that the maid who was gesticulating, now towards the ceiling, and now towards the floor, was complaining both of her own room and of the kitchen accommodation. Her mistress listened carelessly, occasionally trying to soothe her, and in the middle of the stream of talk, Nora slipped away.

"It's horrid!--spending all that money on yourself," thought the girl of seventeen indignantly. "And in Oxford too!--as if anybody wanted such things here."

Meanwhile, she was no sooner gone than her cousin sank down on the armchair, and broke into a slightly hysterical fit of laughter.

"Can we stand it, Annette? We've got to try. Of course you can leave me if you choose."

"And I should like to know how you'd get on then!" said Annette, grimly, beginning again upon the boxes.

"Well, of course, I shouldn't get on at all. But really we might give away a lot of these clothes! I shall never want them."

The speaker looked frowning at the stacks of dresses and lingerie.

Annette made no reply; but went on busily with her unpacking. If the clothes were to be got rid of, they were her perquisites. She was devoted to Constance, but she stood on her rights.

Presently a little s.p.a.ce was cleared on the floor, and Constance, seeing that it was nearly seven o'clock, and the Hoopers supped at half past, took off her black dress with its c.r.a.pe, and put on a white one, high to the throat and long-sleeved; a French demi-toilette, plain, and even severe in make, but cut by the best dressmaker in Nice. She looked extraordinarily tall and slim in it and very foreign. Her maid clasped a long string of opals, which was her only ornament, about her neck. She gave one look at herself in the gla.s.s, holding herself proudly, one might have said arrogantly. But as she turned away, and so that Annette could not see her, she raised the opals, and held them a moment softly to her lips. Her mother had habitually worn them. Then she moved to the window, and looked out over the Hoopers' private garden, to the spreading college lawns, and the grey front beyond.

"Am I really going to stay here a whole year--nearly?" she asked herself, half laughing, half rebellious.

Then her eye fell upon a medley of photographs; snaps from her own camera, which had tumbled out of her bag in unpacking. The topmost one represented a group of young men and maidens standing under a group of stone pines in a Riviera landscape. She herself was in front, with a tall youth beside her. She bent down to look at it.

"I shall come across him I suppose--before long." And raising herself, she stood awhile, thinking; her face alive with an excitement that was half expectation, and half angry recollection.

CHAPTER II

"My dear Ellen, I beg you will not interfere any more with Connie's riding. I have given leave, and that really must settle it. She tells me that her father always allowed her to ride alone--with a groom--in London and the Campagna; she will of course pay all the expenses of it out of her own income, and I see no object whatever in thwarting her.

She is sure to find our life dull enough anyway, after the life she has been living."

"I don't know why you should call Oxford dull, Ewen!" said Mrs. Hooper resentfully. "I consider the society here much better than anything Connie was likely to see on the Riviera--much more respectable anyway.

Well, of course, everybody will call her fast--but that's your affair. I can see already she won't be easily restrained. She's got an uncommonly strong will of her own."

"Well, don't try and restrain her, dear, too much," laughed her husband.

"After all she's twenty, she'll be twenty-one directly. She may not be more than a twelvemonth with us. She need not be, as far as my functions are concerned. Let's make friends with her and make her happy."

"I don't want my girls talked about, thank you, Ewen!" His wife gave an angry dig to the word "my." "Everybody says what a nice ladylike girl Alice is. But Nora often gives me a deal of trouble--and if she takes to imitating Connie, and wanting to go about without a chaperon, I don't know what I shall do. My dear Ewen, do you know what I discovered last night?"

Mrs. Hooper rose and stood over her husband impressively.

"Well--what?"