“Mind you—­I shall make you work!” he said firmly.

“Rather!  May Nora come too?—­if she wishes?  I like Nora!”

“Does that mean—­”

“Only that Alice doesn’t like me!” she said with a frank smile.  “But I agree—­my uncle is a dear.”

“And I hear you are going to ride?”

“Yes.  Mr. Falloden has found me a horse and groom.”

“When did you come to know Mr. Falloden?  I don’t remember anybody of that name at the Barberini.”

She explained carelessly.

“You are going out alone?”

“In general.  Sometimes, no doubt, I shall find a friend.  I must ride!”—­she shook her shoulders impatiently—­“else I shall suffocate in this place.  It’s beautiful—­Oxford!—­but I don’t understand it—­it’s not my friend yet.  You remember that mare of mine in Rome—­Angelica!  I want a good gallop—­God and the grass!”

She laughed and stretched her long and slender arms, clasping her hands above her head.  He realised in her, with a disagreeable surprise, the note that was so unlike her mother—­the note of recklessness, of vehement will.  It was really ill-luck that some one else than Douglas Falloden could not have been found to look after her riding.

* * * * *

“I suppose you will be ‘doing’ the Eights all next week?” said Herbert Pryce to the eldest Miss Hooper.

Alice coldly replied that she supposed it was necessary to take Connie to all the festivities.

“What!—­such a blase young woman!  She seems to have been everywhere and seen everything already.  She will be able to give you and Miss Nora all sorts of hints,” said the mathematical tutor, with a touch of that patronage which was rarely absent from his manner to Alice Hooper.  He was well aware of her interest in him, and flattered by it; but, to do him justice, he had not gone out of his way to encourage it.  She had been all very well, with her pretty little French face, before this striking creature, her cousin, appeared on the scene.  And now of course she was jealous—­that was inevitable.  But it was well girls should learn to measure themselves against others—­should find their proper place.

All the same, he was quite fond of her, the small kittenish thing.  An old friend of his, and of the Hoopers, had once described her as a girl “with a real talent for flirtation and an engaging penury of mind.”  Pryce thought the description good.  She could be really engaging sometimes, when she was happy and amused, and properly dressed.  But ever since the appearance of Constance Bledlow she seemed to have suffered eclipse; to have grown plain and dull.