Lady Connie | Page 4

she was going to be altogether cut out and put in
the background? Alice had a kind of uneasy foreboding that Herbert
Pryce would think a title "interesting."
Meanwhile Nora, having looked through an essay on "Piers Plowman,"
which she was to take to her English Literature tutor on the following

day, went aimlessly upstairs and put her head into Connie's room. The
old house was panelled, and its guest-room, though small and shabby,
had yet absorbed from its oaken walls, and its outlook on the garden
and St. Cyprian's, a certain measure of the Oxford charm. The furniture
was extremely simple--a large hanging cupboard made by curtaining
one of the panelled recesses of the wall, a chest of drawers, a bed, a
small dressing-table and glass, a carpet that was the remains of one
which had originally covered the drawing-room for many years, an
armchair, a writing-table, and curtains which having once been blue
had now been dyed a serviceable though ugly dark red. In Nora's eyes it
was all comfortable and nice. She herself had insisted on having the
carpet and curtains redipped, so that they really looked almost new, and
the one mattress on the bed "made over"; she had brought up the
armchair, and she had gathered the cherry-blossoms, which stood on
the mantelpiece shining against the darkness of the walls. She had also
hung above it a photograph of Watts "Love and Death." Nora looked at
the picture and the flowers with a throb of pleasure. Alice never noticed
such things.
And now what about the maid? Fancy bringing a maid! Nora's
sentiments on the subject were extremely scornful. However Connie
had simply taken it for granted, and she had been housed somehow.
Nora climbed up an attic stair and looked into a room which had a
dormer window in the roof, two strips of carpet on the boards, a bed, a
washing-stand, a painted chest of drawers, a table, with an old
looking-glass, and two chairs. "Well, that's all I have!" thought Nora
defiantly. But a certain hospitable or democratic instinct made her go
downstairs again and bring up a small vase of flowers like those in
Connie's room, and put it on the maid's table. The maid was English,
but she had lived a long time abroad with the Risboroughs.
Sounds! Yes, that was the fly stopping at the front door! Nora flew
downstairs, in a flush of excitement. Alice too had come out into the
hall, looking shy and uncomfortable. Dr. Hooper emerged from his
study. He was a big, loosely built man, with a shock of grizzled hair,
spectacles, and a cheerful expression.

A tall, slim girl, in a grey dust-cloak and a large hat, entered the dark
panelled hall, looking round her. "Welcome, my dear Connie!" said Dr.
Hooper, cordially, taking her hand and kissing her. "Your train must
have been a little late."
"Twenty minutes!" said Mrs. Hooper, who had followed her niece into
the hall. "And the draughts in the station, Ewen, were something
appalling."
The tone was fretful. It had even a touch of indignation as though the
speaker charged her husband with the draughts. Mrs. Hooper was a
woman between forty and fifty, small and plain, except for a pair of
rather fine eyes, which, in her youth, while her cheeks were still pink,
and the obstinate lines of her thin slit mouth and prominent chin were
less marked, had beguiled several lovers, Ewen Hooper at their head.
Dr. Hooper took no notice of her complaints. He was saying to his
niece--"This is Alice, Constance--and Nora! You'll hardly remember
each other again, after all these years."
"Oh, yes, I remember quite well," said a clear, high-pitched voice.
"How do you do!--how do you do?"
And the girl held a hand out to each cousin in turn. She did not offer to
kiss either Alice or Nora. But she looked at them steadily, and suddenly
Nora was aware of that expression of which she had so vivid although
so childish a recollection--as though a satiric spirit sat hidden and
laughing in the eyes, while the rest of the face was quite grave.
"Come in and have some tea. It's quite ready," said Alice, throwing
open the drawing-room door. Her face had cleared suddenly. It did not
seem to her, at least in the shadows of the hall, that her cousin
Constance was anything of a beauty.
"I'm afraid I must look after Annette first. She's much more important
than I am!"
And the girl ran back to where a woman in a blue serge coat and skirt

was superintending the carrying in of the luggage. There was a great
deal of luggage, and Annette, who wore a rather cross, flushed air,
turned round every now and then to look frowningly