After tea, which Mrs. Hooper dispensed with red eyes, and at which neither Nora nor Dr. Hooper appeared, Constance found a novel, and established herself in the deserted schoolroom.  She couldn’t go out.  She was on the watch for a letter that might arrive.  The two banks were only a stone’s throw apart.  The local post should deliver that letter about six.

Once Nora looked in to find a document, and was astonished to see Connie there.  But she was evidently too harassed and miserable to talk.  Connie listened uneasily to the opening and shutting of a drawer, with which she was already acquainted.  Then Nora disappeared again.  What were they trying to do, poor dears!—­Nora, and Uncle Ewen?  What could they do?

The autumn evening darkened slowly.  At last!—­a ring and a double knock.  The study door opened, and Connie heard Nora’s step, and the click of the letter-box.  The study door closed again.

Connie put down her novel and listened.  Her hands trembled.  She was full indeed of qualms and compunctions.  Would they be angry with her?  She had meant it well.

Footsteps approaching—­not Nora’s.

Uncle Ewen stood in the doorway—­looking very pale and strained.

“Connie, would you mind coming into my study?  Something rather strange has happened.”

Connie got up and slowly followed him across the hall.  As she entered the study, she saw Nora, with blazing eyes and cheeks, standing by her father’s writing-table, aglow with anger or excitement—­or both.  She looked at Connie as at an enemy, and Connie flushed a bright pink.

Uncle Ewen shut the door, and addressed his niece.  “My dear Connie, I want you, if you can—­to throw some light on a letter I have just received.  Both Nora and I suspect your hand in it.  If so, you have done something I—­I can’t permit.”

He held out a letter, which Connie took like a culprit.  It was a communication from his Oxford bankers to Professor Hooper, to the effect that, a sum of L1100 having been paid in to his credit by a person who desired to remain unknown, his debt to them was covered, and his account showed a balance of about six hundred pounds.

“My dear!”—­his voice and hand shook—­“is that your doing?”

“Of course it is!” interrupted Nora passionately.  “Look at her, father!  How dared you, Connie, do such a thing without a word to father!  It’s a shame—­a disgrace!  We could have found a way out—­we could!”

And the poor child, worn out with anxiety and lack of sleep, and in her sensitive pride and misery ready to turn on Connie and rend her for having dared thus to play Lady Bountiful without warning or permission, sank into a chair, covered her face with her hands, and burst out sobbing.

Connie handed back the letter, and hung her head.  “Won’t you—­won’t you let the person—­who—­sent the money remain unknown, Uncle Ewen?—­as they wished to be?”

Uncle Ewen sat down before his writing-table, and he also buried his face in his hands.  Connie stood between them—­as it were a prisoner at the bar—­looking now very white and childish.