Lady Connie | Page 8

stood by awkward and
superfluous, feeling certain that the maid who was gesticulating, now
towards the ceiling, and now towards the floor, was complaining both
of her own room and of the kitchen accommodation. Her mistress
listened carelessly, occasionally trying to soothe her, and in the middle
of the stream of talk, Nora slipped away.
"It's horrid!--spending all that money on yourself," thought the girl of
seventeen indignantly. "And in Oxford too!--as if anybody wanted such
things here."
* * * * *
Meanwhile, she was no sooner gone than her cousin sank down on the
armchair, and broke into a slightly hysterical fit of laughter.
"Can we stand it, Annette? We've got to try. Of course you can leave
me if you choose."
"And I should like to know how you'd get on then!" said Annette,
grimly, beginning again upon the boxes.
"Well, of course, I shouldn't get on at all. But really we might give
away a lot of these clothes! I shall never want them."
The speaker looked frowning at the stacks of dresses and lingerie.
Annette made no reply; but went on busily with her unpacking. If the
clothes were to be got rid of, they were her perquisites. She was
devoted to Constance, but she stood on her rights.
Presently a little space was cleared on the floor, and Constance, seeing
that it was nearly seven o'clock, and the Hoopers supped at half past,

took off her black dress with its crape, and put on a white one, high to
the throat and long-sleeved; a French demi-toilette, plain, and even
severe in make, but cut by the best dressmaker in Nice. She looked
extraordinarily tall and slim in it and very foreign. Her maid clasped a
long string of opals, which was her only ornament, about her neck. She
gave one look at herself in the glass, holding herself proudly, one might
have said arrogantly. But as she turned away, and so that Annette could
not see her, she raised the opals, and held them a moment softly to her
lips. Her mother had habitually worn them. Then she moved to the
window, and looked out over the Hoopers' private garden, to the
spreading college lawns, and the grey front beyond.
"Am I really going to stay here a whole year--nearly?" she asked
herself, half laughing, half rebellious.
Then her eye fell upon a medley of photographs; snaps from her own
camera, which had tumbled out of her bag in unpacking. The topmost
one represented a group of young men and maidens standing under a
group of stone pines in a Riviera landscape. She herself was in front,
with a tall youth beside her. She bent down to look at it.
"I shall come across him I suppose--before long." And raising herself,
she stood awhile, thinking; her face alive with an excitement that was
half expectation, and half angry recollection.

CHAPTER II
"My dear Ellen, I beg you will not interfere any more with Connie's
riding. I have given leave, and that really must settle it. She tells me
that her father always allowed her to ride alone--with a groom--in
London and the Campagna; she will of course pay all the expenses of it
out of her own income, and I see no object whatever in thwarting her.
She is sure to find our life dull enough anyway, after the life she has
been living."
"I don't know why you should call Oxford dull, Ewen!" said Mrs.

Hooper resentfully. "I consider the society here much better than
anything Connie was likely to see on the Riviera--much more
respectable anyway. Well, of course, everybody will call her fast--but
that's your affair. I can see already she won't be easily restrained. She's
got an uncommonly strong will of her own."
"Well, don't try and restrain her, dear, too much," laughed her husband.
"After all she's twenty, she'll be twenty-one directly. She may not be
more than a twelvemonth with us. She need not be, as far as my
functions are concerned. Let's make friends with her and make her
happy."
"I don't want my girls talked about, thank you, Ewen!" His wife gave
an angry dig to the word "my." "Everybody says what a nice ladylike
girl Alice is. But Nora often gives me a deal of trouble--and if she takes
to imitating Connie, and wanting to go about without a chaperon, I
don't know what I shall do. My dear Ewen, do you know what I
discovered last night?"
Mrs. Hooper rose and stood over her husband impressively.
"Well--what?"
"You remember Connie went to bed early. Well, when I came up, and
passed her door, I noticed something--somebody in that room
was--smoking! I could not be mistaken. And this morning I questioned
the housemaid. 'Yes, ma'am,' she