Lady Connie. Mrs. Humphry Ward
I think. Do you know him, Aunt Ellen?" She turned towards her aunt.
But Mrs. Hooper only looked blank. She was just thinking anxiously that she had forgotten to take her tabloids after lunch, because Ewen had hustled her off so much too soon to the station.
"I don't think we know him," she said vaguely, turning towards Alice.
"We know all about him. He was introduced to me once."
The tone of the eldest Miss Hooper could scarcely have been colder. The eyes of the girl opposite suddenly sparkled into laughter.
"You didn't like him?"
"Nobody does. He gives himself such ridiculous airs."
"Does he?" said Constance. The information seemed to be of no interest to her. She asked for another cup of tea.
"Oh, Falloden of Marmion?" said Dr. Hooper. "I know him quite well. One of the best pupils I have. But I understand he's the heir to his old uncle, Lord Dagnall, and is going to be enormously rich. His father's a millionaire already. So of course he'll soon forget his Greek. A horrid waste!"
"He's detested in college!" Alice's small face lit up vindictively. "There's a whole set of them. Other people call them 'the bloods.' The dons would like to send them all down."
"They won't send Falloden down, my dear, before he gets his First in Greats, which he will do this summer. But this is his last term. I never knew any one write better Greek iambics than that fellow," said the Reader, pausing in the middle of his cup of tea to murmur certain Greek lines to himself. They were part of the brilliant copy of verses by which Douglas Falloden of Marmion, in a fiercely contested year, had finally won the Ireland, Ewen Hooper being one of the examiners.
"That's what's so abominable," said Alice, setting her small mouth. "You don't expect reading men to drink, and get into rows."
"Drink?" said Constance Bledlow, raising her eyebrows.
Alice went into details. The dons of Marmion, she said, were really frightened by the spread of drinking in college, all caused by the bad example of the Falloden set. She talked fast and angrily, and her cousin listened, half scornfully, but still attentively.
"Why don't they keep him in order?" she said at last. "We did!" And she made a little gesture with her hand, impatient and masterful, as though dismissing the subject.
And at that moment Nora came into the room, flushed either with physical exertion, or the consciousness of her own virtue. She found a place at the tea-table, and panting a little demanded to be fed.
"It's hungry work, carrying up trunks!"
"You didn't!" exclaimed Constance, in large-eyed astonishment. "I say, I am sorry! Why did you? I'm sure they were too heavy. Why didn't Annette get a man?"
And sitting up, she bent across the table, all charm suddenly, and soft distress.
"We did get one, but he was a wretched thing. I was worth two of him," said Nora triumphantly. "You should feel my biceps. There!"
And slipping up her loose sleeve, she showed an arm, at which Constance Bledlow laughed. And her laugh touched her face with something audacious--something wild--which transformed it.
"I shall take care how I offend you!"
Nora nodded over her tea.
"Your maid was shocked. She said I might as well have been a man."
"It's quite true," sighed Mrs. Hooper. "You always were such a tomboy, Nora."
"Not at all! But I wish to develop my muscles. That's why I do Swedish exercises every morning. It's ridiculous how flabby girls are. There isn't a girl in my lecture I can't put down. If you like, I'll teach you my exercises," said Nora, her mouth full of tea-cake, and her expression half friendly, half patronising.
Connie Bledlow did not immediately reply. She seemed to be quietly examining Nora, as she had already examined Alice, and that odd gleam in the eyes under depths appeared again. But at last she said, smiling--
"Thank you. But my muscles are quite strong enough for the only exercise I want. You said I might have a horse, Uncle Ewen, didn't you?" She turned eagerly to the master of the house.
Dr. Hooper looked at his wife with some embarrassment. "I want you to have anything you wish for--in reason--my dear Connie; but your aunt is rather exercised about the proprieties."
The small dried-up woman behind the tea-urn said sharply:
"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-glass, 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