Connie in her turn looked perplexed. It was always difficult for her to realise financial trouble on a small scale. Ruin on the Falloden scale was intelligible to one who had heard much talk of the bankruptcies of some of the great Roman families. But the carking care that may come from lack of a few hundred pounds, this the Risboroughs' daughter had to learn; and she put her mind to it eagerly.

She propped her small chin on her hands, while Alice told her tale.

Apparently the improvement in the family finance, caused by Connie's three hundred, had been the merest temporary thing. The Reader's creditors had been held off for a few months; but the rain of tradesmen's letters had been lately incessant. And the situation had been greatly worsened by a blow which had fallen just before the opening of term.

In a former crisis, five years before this date, a compa.s.sionate cousin, one of the few well-to-do relations that Mrs. Hooper possessed, had come to the rescue, and had given his name to the Hoopers' bankers as guarantee for a loan of 500. The loan was to have been repaid by yearly instalments. But the instalments had not been paid, and the cousin had most unexpectedly died of apoplexy during September, after three days'

illness. His heir would have nothing to say to the guarantee, and the bank was pressing for repayment, in terms made all the harsher by the existence of an overdraft, which the local manager knew in his financial conscience ought not to have been allowed. His letters were now so many sword-thrusts; and post-time was a time of terror.

"Father doesn't know what to do," said Alice despondently. "He and Nora spend all their time trying to think of some way out. Father got his salary the other day, and never put it into the bank at all. We must have something to live on. None"--she hesitated--"none of the tradesmen will give us any credit." She flushed deeply over the confession.

"Goodness!" said Connie, opening her eyes still wider.

"But if Nora knows that I've been telling you"--cried Alice--"she'll never forgive me. She made me promise I wouldn't tell you. But how can you help knowing? If father's made a bankrupt, it wouldn't be very nice for you! How could you go on living with us? Nora thinks she's going to earn money--that father can sell two wretched little books--and we can go and live in a tiny house on the Cowley Road--and--and--all sorts of absurd things!"

"But Why is it Nora that has to settle all these things?" asked Connie in bewilderment. "Why doesn't your mother--"

"Oh, because mother doesn't know anything about the bills," interrupted Alice. "She never can do a sum--or add up anything--and I'm no use at it either. Nora took it all over last year, and she won't let even me help her. She makes out the most wonderful statements--she made out a fresh one to-day--that's why she had a headache when she came to meet you.

But what's the good of statements? They won't pay the bank."

"But why--why--" repeated Connie, and then stopped, lest she should hurt Alice's feelings.

"Why did we get into debt? I'm sure I don't know!" Alice shook her head helplessly. "We never seemed to have anything extravagant."

These things were beyond Connie's understanding. She gave it up. But her mind impetuously ran forward.

"How much is wanted altogether?"

Alice, reluctantly, named a sum not much short of a thousand pounds.

"Isn't it awful?"

She sighed deeply. Yet already she seemed to be talking of other people's affairs!

"We can't ever do it. It's hopeless. Papa's taken two little school-books to do. They'll kill him with work, and will hardly bring in anything. And he's full up with horrid exams and lectures. He'll break down, and it all makes him so miserable, because he can't really do the work the University pays him to do. And he's never been abroad--even to Rome. And as to Greece! It's dreadful!" she repeated mechanically.

Connie sprang up and began to pace the little room. The firelight played on her mop of brown hair, bringing out its golden shades, and on the charming pensiveness of her face. Alice watched her, thinking "She could do it all, if she chose!" But she didn't dare to say anything, for fear of Nora.

Presently Connie gave a great stretch.

"It's d.a.m.nable!" she said, with energy.

Alice's instinct recoiled from the strong word. It wasn't the least necessary, she thought, to talk in that way.

Connie made a good many more enquiries--elicited a good many more facts.

Then suddenly she brought her pacing to a stop.

"Look here--we must go to bed!--or Nora will be after us."

Alice went obediently. As soon as the door had shut upon her, Connie went to a drawer in her writing table, and took out her bank-book. It had returned that morning and she had not troubled to look at it. There was always enough for what she wanted.

Heavens!--what a balance. She had quite forgotten a wind-fall which had come lately--some complicated transaction relating to a great industrial company in which she had shares and which had lately been giving birth to other subsidiary companies, and somehow the original shareholders, of whom Lord Risborough had been one, or their heirs and representatives, had profited greatly by the business. It had all been managed for her by her father's lawyer, and of course by Uncle Ewen. The money had been paid temporarily in to her own account, till the lawyer could make some enquiries about a fresh investment.

But it was her own money. She was ent.i.tled to--under the terms of her father's letter to Uncle Ewen--to do what she liked with it. And even without it, there was enough in the bank. Enough for this--and for another purpose also, which lay even closer to her heart.

"I don't want any more new gowns for six months," she decided peremptorily. "It's disgusting to be so well off. Well, now,--I wonder--I wonder where Nora keeps those statements that Alice talks about?"

In the schoolroom of course. But not under lock and key. n.o.body ever locked drawers in that house. It was part of the general happy-go-luckishness of the family.

Connie made up the fire, and sat over it, thinking hard. A new cheque-book, too, had arrived with the bank-book. That was useful.

She waited till she heard the schoolroom door open, and Nora come upstairs, followed soon by the slow and weary step of Uncle Ewen. Connie had already lowered her gas before Nora reached the top landing.

The house was very soon silent. Connie turned her light on again, and waited. By the time Big Ben had struck one o'clock, she thought it would be safe to venture.

She opened her door with trembling, careful fingers, slipped off her shoes, took a candle and stole downstairs. The schoolroom door creaked odiously. But soon she was inside and looking about her.

There was Nora's table, piled high with the books and note-books of her English literature work. Everything else had been put away. But the top drawer of the table was unlocked. There was a key in it, but it would not turn, being out of repair, like so much else in the house.

Connie, full of qualms, slowly opened the drawer. It was horrid--horrid--to do such things!--but what other way was there? Nora must be presented with the _fait accompli_, otherwise she would upset everything--poor old darling!

Some loose sheets lay on the top of the papers in the drawer. The first was covered with figures and calculations that told nothing. Connie lifted it, and there, beneath, lay Nora's latest "statement," at which she and her father had no doubt been working that very night. It was headed "List of Liabilities," and in it every debt, headed by the bank claim which had broken the family back, was accurately and clearly stated in Nora's best hand. The total at the foot evoked a low whistle from Connie. How had it come about? In spite of her luxurious bringing up, there was a shrewd element--an element of competence--in the girl's developing character, which was inclined to suggest that there need be no more difficulty in living on seven hundred a year than seven thousand, if you knew you had to do it. Then she rebuked herself fiercely for a prig--"You just try it!--you Pharisee, you!" And she thought of her own dressmakers' and milliners' bills, and became in the end quite pitiful over Aunt Ellen's moderation. After all it might have been two thousand instead of one! Of course it was all Aunt Ellen's muddling, and Uncle Ewen's absent-mindedness.

She shaded her candle, and in a guilty hurry copied down the total on a slip of paper lying on the table, and took the address of Uncle Ewen's bank from the outside of the pa.s.s-book lying beside the bills. Having done that, she Closed the drawer again, and crept upstairs like the criminal she felt herself. Her small feet in their thin stockings seemed to her excited ears to be making the most hideous and unnatural noise on every step. If Nora heard!

At last she was safe in her own room again. The door was locked, and the more agreeable part of the crime began. She drew out the new cheque-book lying in her own drawer, and very slowly and deliberately wrote a cheque. Then she put it up, with a few covering words--anxiously considered--and addressed the envelope to the Oxford branch of a well-known banking firm, her father's bankers, to which her own account had been transferred on her arrival at Oxford. Ewen Hooper had scrupulously refrained from recommending his own bank, lest he should profit indirectly by his niece's wealth.

"Annette shall take it," she thought, "first thing. Oh, what a row there'll be!"

And then, uneasily pleased with her performance, she went to bed.

And she had soon forgotten all about her raid upon Uncle Ewen's affairs.

Her thoughts floated to a little cottage on the hills, and its two coming inhabitants. And in her dream she seemed to hear herself say--"I oughtn't to be meddling with other people's lives like this. I don't know enough. I'm too young! I want somebody to show me--I do!"

The following day pa.s.sed heavily in the Hooper household. Nora and her father were closeted together all the morning; and there was a sense of brooding calamity in the air. Alice and Connie avoided each other, and Connie asked no questions. After luncheon Sorell called. He found Connie in the drawing-room alone, and gave her the news she was pining for. As Nora had reported, a cottage on Boar's Hill had been taken. It belonged to the head of an Oxford college, who had spent the preceding winter there for his health, but had now been ordered abroad. It was very small, pleasantly furnished, and had a glorious view over Oxford in the hollow, the wooded lines of Garsington and Nuneham, and the distant ridges of the Chilterns. Radowitz was expected the following day, and his old college servant, with a woman to cook and do housework, had been found to look after him. He was working hard, at his symphony, and was on the whole much the same in health--very frail and often extremely irritable; with alternations of cheerfulness and depression.

"And Mr. Falloden?" Connie ventured.

"He's coming soon--I didn't ask," said Sorell shortly. "That arrangement won't last long."

Connie hesitated.

"But don't wish it to fail!" she said piteously.

"I think the sooner it is over the better," said Sorell, with rather stern decision. "Falloden ought never to have made the proposal, and it was mere caprice in Otto to accept it. But you know what I think. I shall watch the whole thing very anxiously; and try to have some one ready to put into Falloden's place--when it breaks down. Mrs. Mulholland and I have it in hand. She'll take Otto up to the cottage to-morrow, and means to mother Radowitz as much as he'll let her. Now then"--he changed the subject with a smile--"are you going to enjoy your winter term?"

His dark eyes, as she met them, were full of an anxious affection.

"I have forgotten all my Greek!"