“Enfin?” said Connie, with the old laugh in her eyes.  “You are quite sure?”

He looked at her uneasily.

“It never does to hurry these things,” he said, rather pompously.  “I wanted to feel I could give her what she had a right to expect.  We owe you a great deal, Lady Constance—­or—­perhaps now—­I may call you Constance?”

Constance winced, and pointedly avoided giving him leave.  But for Alice’s sake, she held her tongue.  The wedding was to be hurried on, and Mrs. Hooper, able for once to buy new frocks with a clear conscience, and possessed of the money to pay for them, was made so happy by the bustle of the trousseau that she fell in love with her prospective son-in-law as the cause of it.  Ewen Hooper meanwhile watched him with mildly shrewd eyes, deciding once more in his inner mind that mathematicians were an inferior race.

Not even to Nora—­only to Mrs. Mulholland, did Constance ever lift the veil, during these months.  She was not long in succumbing to the queer charm of that lovable and shapeless person; and in the little drawing-room in St. Giles, the girl of twenty would spend winter evenings, at the feet of her new friend, passing through various stages of confession; till one night, Mrs. Mulholland lifted the small face, with her own large hand, and looked mockingly into the brown eyes: 

“Out with it, my dear!  You are in love with Douglas Falloden!”

Connie said nothing.  Her little chin did not withdraw itself, nor did her eyes drop.  But a film of tears rushed into them.

The truth was that in this dark wintry Oxford, and its neighbouring country, there lurked a magic for Connie which in the high summer pomps it had never possessed.  Once or twice, in the distance of a winding street—­on some football ground in the Parks—­in the gallery of St. Mary’s on Sunday, Constance caught sight, herself unseen, of the tall figure and the curly head.  Such glimpses made the fever of her young life.  They meant far more to passion than her occasional meetings with Falloden at the Boar’s Hill cottage.  And there were other points of contact.  At the end of November, for instance, came the Merton Fellowship.  Falloden won it, in a brilliant field; and Connie contrived to know all she wanted to know as to his papers, and his rivals.  After the announcement of his success, she trod on air.  Finally she allowed herself to send him a little note of congratulation—­very short and almost formal.  He replied in the same tone.

Two days later, Falloden went over to Paris to see for himself the condition of the Orpheus, and to arrange for its transport to England.  He was away for nearly a week, and on his return called at once in Holywell, to report his visit.  Nora was with Connie in the drawing-room when he was announced; and a peremptory look forbade her to slip away.  She sat listening to the conversation.