Lady Connie | Page 9

said, 'her ladyship smoked two
cigarettes last night, and Mrs. Tinkler'--that's the maid--'says she
always smokes two before she goes to bed.' Then I spoke to
Tinkler--whose manner to me, I consider, is not at all what it should
be--and she said that Connie smoked three cigarettes a day always--that
Lady Risborough smoked--that all the ladies in Rome smoked--that
Connie began it before her mother died--and her mother didn't mind--"
"Well then, my dear, you needn't mind," exclaimed Dr. Hooper.
"I always thought Ella Risborough went to pieces--rather--in that
dreadful foreign life," said Mrs. Hooper firmly. "Everybody does--you

can't help it."
"I don't know what you mean by going 'to pieces,'" said Ewen Hooper
warmly. "I only know that when they came here ten years ago, I
thought her one of the most attractive--one of the most charming
women I had ever seen."
From where he stood, on the hearth-rug of his study, smoking an
after-breakfast pipe, he looked down--frowning--upon his wife, and
Mrs. Hooper felt that she had perhaps gone too far. Never had she
forgotten, never had she ceased to resent her own sense of inferiority
and disadvantage, beside her brilliant sister-in-law on the occasion of
that long past visit. She could still see Ella Risborough at the All Souls'
luncheon given to the newly made D.C.Ls, sitting on the right of the
Vice-Chancellor, and holding a kind of court afterwards in the library;
a hat that was little more than a wreath of forget-me-nots on her dark
hair, and a long, lace cloak draping the still young and graceful figure.
She remembered vividly the soft, responsive eyes and smile, and the
court of male worshippers about them. Professors, tutors young and old,
undergraduates and heads of houses, had crowded round the mother
and the long-legged, distinguished-looking child, who clung so closely
to her side; and if only she could have given Oxford a few more days,
the whole place would have been at Ella Risborough's feet. "So
intelligent too!" said the enthusiastic--"so learned even!" A member of
the Roman "Accademia dei Lincei," with only one other woman to
keep her company in that august band; and yet so modest, so
unpretending, so full of laughter, and life, and sex! Mrs. Hooper, who
generally found herself at these official luncheons in a place which her
small egotism resented, had watched her sister-in-law from a distance,
envying her dress, her title, her wealth, bitterly angry that Ewen's sister
should have a place in the world that Ewen's wife could never hope to
touch, and irrevocably deciding that Ella Risborough was "fast" and
gave herself airs. Nor did the afternoon visit, when the Risboroughs,
with great difficulty, had made time for the family call on the Hoopers,
supply any more agreeable memories. Ella Risborough had been so
rapturously glad to see her brother, and in spite of a real effort to be
friendly had had so little attention to spare for his wife! It was true she

had made much of the Hooper children, and had brought them all
presents from Italy. But Mrs. Hooper had chosen to think the laughing
sympathy and evident desire to please "affectation," or patronage, and
had been vexed in her silent corner to see how little her own two girls
could hold their own beside Constance.
As for Lord Risborough, he had frankly found it difficult to remember
Mrs. Hooper's identity, while on the other hand he fell at once into keen
discussion of some recent finds in the Greek islands with Ewen Hooper,
to whom in the course of half an hour it was evident that he took a
warm liking. He put up his eye-glass to look at the Hooper children; he
said vaguely, "I hope that some day you and Mrs. Hooper will descend
upon us in Rome;" and then he hurried his wife away with the audible
remark--"We really must get to Blenheim, Ellie, in good time. You
promised the Duchess--"
So ill-bred--so snobbish--to talk of your great acquaintances in public!
And as for Lady Risborough's answer--"I don't care twopence about the
Duchess, Hugh! and I haven't seen Ewen for six years,"--it had been
merely humbug, for she had obediently followed her husband, all the
same.
Recollections of this kind went trickling through Mrs. Hooper's mind,
roused by Ewen's angry defence of his sister. It was all very well, but
now the long-legged child had grown up, and was going to put
her--Ellen Hooper's--daughters in the shade, to make them feel their
inferiority, just as the mother had done with herself. Of course the
money was welcome. Constance was to contribute three hundred a year,
which was a substantial addition to an income which, when all
supplemental earnings--exams, journalism, lectures--were counted,
rarely reached seven hundred. But they would be "led into
expenses"--the