“Annette shall take it,” she thought, “first thing.  Oh, what a row there’ll be!”

And then, uneasily pleased with her performance, she went to bed.

And she had soon forgotten all about her raid upon Uncle Ewen’s affairs.  Her thoughts floated to a little cottage on the hills, and its two coming inhabitants.  And in her dream she seemed to hear herself say—­“I oughtn’t to be meddling with other people’s lives like this.  I don’t know enough.  I’m too young!  I want somebody to show me—­I do!”

* * * * *

The following day passed heavily in the Hooper household.  Nora and her father were closeted together all the morning; and there was a sense of brooding calamity in the air.  Alice and Connie avoided each other, and Connie asked no questions.  After luncheon Sorell called.  He found Connie in the drawing-room alone, and gave her the news she was pining for.  As Nora had reported, a cottage on Boar’s Hill had been taken.  It belonged to the head of an Oxford college, who had spent the preceding winter there for his health, but had now been ordered abroad.  It was very small, pleasantly furnished, and had a glorious view over Oxford in the hollow, the wooded lines of Garsington and Nuneham, and the distant ridges of the Chilterns.  Radowitz was expected the following day, and his old college servant, with a woman to cook and do housework, had been found to look after him.  He was working hard, at his symphony, and was on the whole much the same in health—­very frail and often extremely irritable; with alternations of cheerfulness and depression.

“And Mr. Falloden?” Connie ventured.

“He’s coming soon—­I didn’t ask,” said Sorell shortly.  “That arrangement won’t last long.”

Connie hesitated.

“But don’t wish it to fail!” she said piteously.

“I think the sooner it is over the better,” said Sorell, with rather stern decision.  “Falloden ought never to have made the proposal, and it was mere caprice in Otto to accept it.  But you know what I think.  I shall watch the whole thing very anxiously; and try to have some one ready to put into Falloden’s place—­when it breaks down.  Mrs. Mulholland and I have it in hand.  She’ll take Otto up to the cottage to-morrow, and means to mother Radowitz as much as he’ll let her.  Now then”—­he changed the subject with a smile—­“are you going to enjoy your winter term?”

His dark eyes, as she met them, were full of an anxious affection.

“I have forgotten all my Greek!”

“Oh no—­not in a month.  Prepare me a hundred lines of the ‘Odyssey,’ Book VI.!  Next week I shall have some time.  This first week is always a drive.  Miss Nora says she’ll go on again.”

“Does she?  She seems so—­so busy.”

“Ah, yes—­she’s got some work for the University Press.  Plucky little thing!  But she mustn’t overdo it.”

Connie dropped the subject.  These conferences in the study, which had gone on all day, had nothing to do with Nora’s work for the Press—­that she was certain of.  But she only said—­holding out her hands, with the free gesture that was natural to her—­