“How much is wanted altogether?”

Alice, reluctantly, named a sum not much short of a thousand pounds.

“Isn’t it awful?”

She sighed deeply.  Yet already she seemed to be talking of other people’s affairs!

“We can’t ever do it.  It’s hopeless.  Papa’s taken two little school-books to do.  They’ll kill him with work, and will hardly bring in anything.  And he’s full up with horrid exams and lectures.  He’ll break down, and it all makes him so miserable, because he can’t really do the work the University pays him to do.  And he’s never been abroad—­even to Rome.  And as to Greece!  It’s dreadful!” she repeated mechanically.

Connie sprang up and began to pace the little room.  The firelight played on her mop of brown hair, bringing out its golden shades, and on the charming pensiveness of her face.  Alice watched her, thinking “She could do it all, if she chose!” But she didn’t dare to say anything, for fear of Nora.

Presently Connie gave a great stretch.

“It’s damnable!” she said, with energy.

Alice’s instinct recoiled from the strong word.  It wasn’t the least necessary, she thought, to talk in that way.

Connie made a good many more enquiries—­elicited a good many more facts.  Then suddenly she brought her pacing to a stop.

“Look here—­we must go to bed!—­or Nora will be after us.”

Alice went obediently.  As soon as the door had shut upon her, Connie went to a drawer in her writing table, and took out her bank-book.  It had returned that morning and she had not troubled to look at it.  There was always enough for what she wanted.

Heavens!—­what a balance.  She had quite forgotten a wind-fall which had come lately—­some complicated transaction relating to a great industrial company in which she had shares and which had lately been giving birth to other subsidiary companies, and somehow the original shareholders, of whom Lord Risborough had been one, or their heirs and representatives, had profited greatly by the business.  It had all been managed for her by her father’s lawyer, and of course by Uncle Ewen.  The money had been paid temporarily in to her own account, till the lawyer could make some enquiries about a fresh investment.

But it was her own money.  She was entitled to—­under the terms of her father’s letter to Uncle Ewen—­to do what she liked with it.  And even without it, there was enough in the bank.  Enough for this—­and for another purpose also, which lay even closer to her heart.

“I don’t want any more new gowns for six months,” she decided peremptorily.  “It’s disgusting to be so well off.  Well, now,—­I wonder—­I wonder where Nora keeps those statements that Alice talks about?”

In the schoolroom of course.  But not under lock and key.  Nobody ever locked drawers in that house.  It was part of the general happy-go-luckishness of the family.

Connie made up the fire, and sat over it, thinking hard.  A new cheque-book, too, had arrived with the bank-book.  That was useful.