Lady Connie | Page 5

into the hall, and spoke peremptorily to the white-capped parlourmaid who stood bewildered among the trunks.
"Have those boxes--" she pointed to four--two large American Saratogas, and two smaller trunks--"carried up to her ladyship's room. The other two can go into mine."
"Miss!" whispered the agitated maid in Nora's ear, "we'll never get any of those boxes up the top-stairs. And if we put them four into her ladyship's room, she'll not be able to move."
"I'll come and see to it," said Nora, snatching up a bag. "They've got to go somewhere!"
Mrs. Hooper repeated that Nora would manage it, and languidly waved her niece towards the drawing-room. The girl hesitated, laughed, and finally yielded, seeing that Nora was really in charge. Dr. Hooper led her in, placed an armchair for her beside the tea-table, and stood closely observing her.
"You're like your mother," he said, at last, in a low voice; "at least in some points." The girl turned away abruptly, as though what he said jarred, and addressed herself to Alice.
"Poor Annette was very sick. It was a vile crossing."
"Oh, the servants will look after her," said Alice indifferently.
"Everybody has to look after Annette!--or she'll know the reason why," laughed Lady Constance, removing her black gloves from a very small and slender hand. She was dressed in deep mourning with crape still upon her hat and dress, though it was more than a year since her mother's death. Such mourning was not customary in Oxford, and Alice Hooper thought it affected.
Mrs. Hooper then made the tea. But the newcomer paid little attention to the cup placed beside her. Her eyes wandered round the group at the tea-table, her uncle, a man of originally strong physique, marred now by the student's stoop, and by weak eyes, tried by years of Greek and German type; her aunt--
"What a very odd woman Aunt Ellen is!" thought Constance.
For, all the way from the station, Mrs. Hooper had talked about scarcely anything but her own ailments, and the Oxford climate. "She told us all about her rheumatisms--and the east winds--and how she ought to go to Buxton every year--only Uncle Hooper wouldn't take things seriously. And she never asked us anything at all about our passage, or our night journey! And there was Annette--as yellow as an egg--and as _cross_--"
However Dr. Hooper was soon engaged in making up for his wife's shortcomings. He put his niece through many questions as to the year which had elapsed since her parent's death; her summer in the high Alps, and her winter at Cannes.
"I never met your friends--Colonel and Mrs. King. We are not military in Oxford. But they seem--to judge from their letters--to be very nice people," said the Professor, his tone, quite unconsciously, suggesting the slightest shade of patronage.
"Oh, they're dears," said the girl warmly. "They were awfully good to me."
"Cannes was very gay, I suppose?"
"We saw a great many people in the afternoons. The Kings knew everybody. But I didn't go out in the evenings."
"You weren't strong enough?"
"I was in mourning," said the girl, looking at him with her large and brilliant eyes.
"Yes, yes, of course!" murmured the Reader, not quite understanding why he felt himself a trifle snubbed. He asked a few more questions, and his niece, who seemed to have no shyness, gave a rapid description, as she sipped her tea, of the villa at Cannes in which she had passed the winter months, and of the half dozen families, with whom she and her friends had been mostly thrown. Alice Hooper was secretly thrilled by some of the names which dropped out casually. She always read the accounts in the _Queen_, or the _Sketch_, of "smart society" on the Riviera, and it was plain to her that Constance had been dreadfully "in it." It would not apparently have been possible to be more "in it." She was again conscious of a hot envy of her cousin which made her unhappy. Also Connie's good looks were becoming more evident. She had taken off her hat, and all the distinction of her small head, her slender neck and sloping shoulders, was more visible; her self-possession, too, the ease and vivacity of her gestures. Her manner was that of one accustomed to a large and varied world, who took all things without surprise, as they came. Dr. Hooper had felt some emotion, and betrayed some, in this meeting with his sister's motherless child; but the girl's only betrayal of feeling had lain in the sharpness with which she had turned away from her uncle's threatened effusion. "And how she looks at us!" thought Alice. "She looks at us through and through. Yet she doesn't stare."
But at that moment Alice heard the word "prince," and her attention was instantly arrested.
"We had some Russian neighbours," the newcomer was saying;