Connie drew in her breath.

“No, I am not sorry, I am very glad to be back—­though my aunts have been great dears to me.”

“I’ll bet anything Annette isn’t glad to be back—­after the Langmoors!” said Nora grimly.

Connie laughed.

“She’ll soon settle in.  What do you think?” She slipped her arm into her cousin’s.  “I’m coming down to breakfast!”

“You’re not!  I never heard such nonsense!  Why should you?”

Connie sighed.

“I think I must begin to do something.”

“Do something!  For goodness’ sake, don’t!” Nora’s voice was fierce.  “I did think you might be trusted!”

“To carry out your ideals?  So kind of you!”

“If you take to muddling about with books and lectures and wearing ugly clothes, I give you up,” said Nora firmly.

“Nora, dear, I’m the most shocking ignoramus.  Mayn’t I learn something?”

“Mr. Sorell may teach you Greek.  I don’t mind that.”

Connie sighed again, and Nora stole a look at the small pale face under the sailor hat.  It seemed to her that her cousin had somehow grown beautiful in these months of absence.  On her arrival in May, Connie’s good looks had been a freakish and variable thing, which could be often and easily disputed.  She could always make a certain brilliant or bizarre effect, by virtue of her mere slenderness and delicacy, combined with the startling beauty of her eyes and hair.  But the touch of sarcasm, of a half-hostile remoteness, in her look and manner, were often enough to belie the otherwise delightful impression of first youth, to suggest something older and sharper than her twenty years had any right to be.  It meant that she had been brought up in a world of elder people, sharing from her teens in its half-amused, half-sceptical judgments of men and things.  Nothing was to be seen of it in her roused moments of pleasure or enthusiasm; at other times it jarred, as though one caught a glimpse of autumn in the spring.

But since she and Nora had last met, something had happened.  Some heat of feeling or of sympathy had fused in her the elements of being; so that a more human richness and warmth, a deeper and tenderer charm breathed from her whole aspect.  Nora, though so much the younger, had hitherto been the comforter and sustainer of Connie; now for the first time, the tired girl felt an impulse—­firmly held back—­to throw her arms round Connie’s neck and tell her own troubles.

She did not betray it, however.  There were so many things she wanted to know.  First—­how was it that Connie had come back so soon?  Nora understood there were invitations to the Tamworths and others.  Mr. Sorell had reported that the Langmoors wished to carry their niece with them on a round of country-house visits in the autumn, and that Connie had firmly stuck to it that she was due at Oxford for the beginning of term.

“Why didn’t you go,” said Nora, half scoffing—­“with all those frocks wasting in the drawers?”