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

She sprang up, and went through her dressing, thinking all the time.

"What do I really feel about him? I am going to ride with him on Monday--without telling anybody; I vowed I would never put myself in his power again. And I am deliberately doing it. I am in my guardian's house, and I am treating Uncle Ewen vilely."

And why?--why these lapses from good manners and good feeling? Was she after all in love with him? If he asked her to marry him again, as he had asked her to marry him before, would she now say yes, instead of no?

Not at all! She was further--she declared--from saying yes now, than she had been under his first vehement attack. And yet she was quite determined to ride with him. The thought of their rides in the radiant Christmas sunshine at Cannes came back upon her with a rush. They had been one continuous excitement, simply because it was Falloden who rode beside her--Falloden, who after their merry dismounted lunch under the pines, had swung her to her saddle again--her little foot in his strong hand--so easily and powerfully. It was Falloden who, when she and two or three others of the party found themselves by mistake on a dangerous bridle-path, on the very edge of a steep ravine in the Esterels, and her horse had become suddenly restive, had thrown himself off his own mount, and pa.s.sing between her horse and the precipice, where any sudden movement of the frightened beast would have sent him to his death, had seized the bridle and led her into safety. And yet all the time, she had disliked him almost as much as she had been drawn to him. None of the many signs of his autocratic and imperious temper had escaped her, and the pride in her had clashed against the pride in him. To flirt with him was one thing. The cloud of grief and illness, which had fallen so heavily on her youth, was just lifting under the natural influences of time at the moment when she and Falloden first came across each other.

It was a moment for her of strong reaction, of a welling-up and welling-back of life, after a kind of suspension. The strong young, fellow, with his good looks, his masterful ways, and his ability--in spite of the barely disguised audacity which seemed inseparable from the homage it pleased him to pay to women--had made a deep and thrilling impression upon her youth and s.e.x.

And yet she had never hesitated when he had asked her to marry him. Ride with him--laugh with him--quarrel with him, yes!--marry him, no!

Something very deep in her recoiled. She refused him, and then had lain awake most of the night thinking of her mother and feeling ecstatically sure, while the tears came raining, that the dear ghost approved that part of the business at least, if no other.

And how could there be any compunction about it? Douglas Falloden, with his egotism, his pride in himself, his family, his wits, his boundless confidence in his own brilliant future, was surely fair game. Such men do not break their hearts for love. She had refused his request that he might write to her without a qualm; and mostly because she imagined so vividly what would have been his look of triumph had she granted it.

Then she had spent the rest of the winter and early spring in thinking about him. And now she was going to do this reckless thing, out of sheer wilfulness, sheer thirst for adventure. She had always been a spoilt child, brought up with boundless indulgence, and accustomed to all the excitements of life. It looked as though Douglas Falloden were to be her excitement in Oxford. Girls like the two Miss Mansons might take possession of him in public, so long as she commanded those undiscovered rides and talks which revealed the real man. At the same time, he should never be able to feel secure that she would do his bidding, or keep appointments. As soon as Lady Laura's civil note arrived, she was determined to refuse it. He had counted on her coming; therefore she would not go. Her first move had been a deliberate check; her second should be a concession. In any case she would keep the upper hand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The mere sight of her--the slim willowy creature, with her distinguished head and her beautiful eyes--revived in him the memory of some of his happiest and most sacred hours. It was her mother who had produced upon his own early maturity one of those critical impressions, for good or evil, which men so sensitive and finely strung owe to women.

The tenderness, the sympathy, the womanly insight of Ella Risborough had drawn him out of one of those fits of bitter despondency which are so apt to beset the scholar just emerging, strained and temporarily injured, from the first contests of life.

He had done brilliantly at Oxford--more than brilliantly--and he had paid for overwork by a long break-down. After getting his fellowship he had been ordered abroad for rest and travel. There was n.o.body to help him, n.o.body to think for him. His father and mother were dead; and of near relations he had only a brother, established in business at Liverpool, with whom he had little or nothing in common. At Rome he had fallen in with the Risboroughs, and had wandered with them during a whole spring through enchanted land of Sicily, where it gradually became bearable again to think of the too-many things he knew, and to apply them to his own pleasure and that of his companions. Ella Risborough was then forty-two, seventeen years older than himself, and her only daughter was a child of sixteen. He had loved them all--father, mother, and child--with the adoring grat.i.tude of one physically and morally orphaned, to whom a new home and family has been temporarily given. For Ella and her husband had taken a warm affection to the refined and modest fellow, and could not do enough for him. His fellowship, and some small savings, gave him all the money he wanted, but he was starved of everything else that Man's kindred can generally provide--sympathy, and understanding without words, and the little gaieties and kindnesses of every day. These the Risboroughs offered him without stint, and rejoiced to see him taking hold on life again under the sunshine they made for him. After six months he was quite restored to health, and he went back to Oxford to devote himself to his college work.

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

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

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: The tea-party at Mrs. Hooper's]

He saw plainly that her presence at the Hoopers was going to transform the household in various unexpected ways. On this Sat.u.r.day afternoon Mrs. Hooper's stock of teacups entirely ran out; so did her garden chairs. Mrs. Manson called--and Lord Meyrick, under the wing of a young fellow of All Souls, smooth-faced and slim, one of the "mighty men" of the day, just taking wing for the bar and Parliament. Falloden, he understood, had put in an appearance earlier in the afternoon; Herbert Pryce, and Bobbie Vernon of Magdalen, a Blue of the first eminence, skirmished round and round the newcomer, taking possession of her when they could. Mrs. Hooper, under the influence of so much social success, showed a red and fl.u.s.tered countenance, and her lace cap went awry.

Alice helped her mother in the distribution of tea, but was curiously silent and self-effaced. It was dismally true that the men who usually paid attention to her were now entirely occupied with Constance. Bobbie Vernon, who was artistic, was holding an ardent though intermittent discussion with Constance on the merits of old pictures and new. Pryce occasionally took part in it, but only, as Sorell soon perceived, for the sake of diverting a few of Connie's looks and gestures, a sally or a smile, now and then to himself.

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

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

He could not help a slight flush.

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

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

"How could I be!"

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

His look betrayed his feeling.

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

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

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

Sorell smiled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I should like to learn Greek."

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

"Do you really mean it?"

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

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

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