"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. b.a.l.l.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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 st.i.tches.

"Oh, it's all very well," said Constance, with amus.e.m.e.nt--"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 gra.s.s 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 subst.i.tute. 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.