Nora Hooper looked rather sharply at her sister.  It fell to her in the family to be constantly upholding the small daily traditions of honesty and fair play.  It was she who championed the servants, or insisted, young as she was, on bills being paid, when it would have been more agreeable to buy frocks and go to London for a theatre.  She was a great power in the house, and both her languid, incompetent mother, and her pretty sister were often afraid of her.  Nora was a “Home Student,” and had just begun to work seriously for English Literature Honours.  Alice on the other hand was the domestic and social daughter.  She helped her mother in the house, had a head full of undergraduates, and regarded the “Eights” week and Commemoration as the shining events of the year.

Both girls were however at one in the uneasy or excited anticipation with which they were looking forward that evening to the arrival of a newcomer, who was, it seemed, to make part of the household for some time.  Their father, Dr. Ewen Hooper, the holder of a recently founded classical readership, had once possessed a younger sister of considerable beauty, who, in the course of an independent and adventurous career, had captured—­by no ignoble arts—­a widower, who happened to be also an earl and a rich man.  It happened while they were both wintering at Florence, the girl working at paleography, in the Ambrosian Library, while Lord Risborough, occupying a villa in the neighbourhood of the Torre San Gallo, was giving himself to the artistic researches and the cosmopolitan society which suited his health and his tastes.  He was a dilettante of the old sort, incurably in love with living, in spite of the loss of his wife, and his only son; in spite also of an impaired heart—­in the physical sense—­and various other drawbacks.  He came across the bright girl student, discovered that she could talk very creditably about manuscripts and illuminations, gave her leave to work in his own library, where he possessed a few priceless things, and presently found her company, her soft voice, and her eager, confiding eyes quite indispensable.  His elderly sister, Lady Winifred, who kept house for him, frowned on the business in vain; and finally departed in a huff to join another maiden sister, Lady Marcia, in an English country menage, where for some years she did little but lament the flesh-pots of Italy—­Florence.  The married sister, Lady Langmoor, wrote reams of plaintive remonstrances, which remained unanswered.  Lord Risborough married the girl student, Ella Hooper, and never regretted it.  They had one daughter, to whom they devoted themselves—­preposterously, their friends thought; but for twenty years, they were three happy people together.  Then virulent influenza, complicated with pneumonia, carried off the mother during a spring visit to Rome, and six weeks later Lord Risborough died of the damaged heart which had held out so long.