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 at the old gabled house into which it was being carried, as though she were more than doubtful whether the building would hold the boxes. Yet as houses went, in the older parts of Oxford, Medburn House, Holywell, was roomy.
"Annette, don't do any unpacking till after tea!" cried Lady Constance. "Just get the boxes carried up, and rest a bit. I'll come and help you later."
The maid said nothing. Her lips seemed tightly compressed. She stepped 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; "Prince and Princess Jaroslav; and they had an English party at Christmas. It was great fun. They used to take us out riding into the mountains, or into Italy." She paused a moment, and then said carelessly--as though to keep up the conversation--"There was a Mr. Falloden with them--an undergraduate at Marmion College,