Sounds!  Yes, that was the fly stopping at the front door!  Nora flew downstairs, in a flush of excitement.  Alice too had come out into the hall, looking shy and uncomfortable.  Dr. Hooper emerged from his study.  He was a big, loosely built man, with a shock of grizzled hair, spectacles, and a cheerful expression.

A tall, slim girl, in a grey dust-cloak and a large hat, entered the dark panelled hall, looking round her.  “Welcome, my dear Connie!” said Dr. Hooper, cordially, taking her hand and kissing her.  “Your train must have been a little late.”

“Twenty minutes!” said Mrs. Hooper, who had followed her niece into the hall.  “And the draughts in the station, Ewen, were something appalling.”

The tone was fretful.  It had even a touch of indignation as though the speaker charged her husband with the draughts.  Mrs. Hooper was a woman between forty and fifty, small and plain, except for a pair of rather fine eyes, which, in her youth, while her cheeks were still pink, and the obstinate lines of her thin slit mouth and prominent chin were less marked, had beguiled several lovers, Ewen Hooper at their head.

Dr. Hooper took no notice of her complaints.  He was saying to his niece—­“This is Alice, Constance—­and Nora!  You’ll hardly remember each other again, after all these years.”

“Oh, yes, I remember quite well,” said a clear, high-pitched voice.  “How do you do!—­how do you do?”

And the girl held a hand out to each cousin in turn.  She did not offer to kiss either Alice or Nora.  But she looked at them steadily, and suddenly Nora was aware of that expression of which she had so vivid although so childish a recollection—­as though a satiric spirit sat hidden and laughing in the eyes, while the rest of the face was quite grave.

“Come in and have some tea.  It’s quite ready,” said Alice, throwing open the drawing-room door.  Her face had cleared suddenly.  It did not seem to her, at least in the shadows of the hall, that her cousin Constance was anything of a beauty.

“I’m afraid I must look after Annette first.  She’s much more important than I am!”

And the girl ran back to where a woman in a blue serge coat and skirt was superintending the carrying in of the luggage.  There was a great deal of luggage, and Annette, who wore a rather cross, flushed air, turned round every now and then to look frowningly at the old gabled house into which it was being carried, as though she were more than doubtful whether the building would hold the boxes.  Yet as houses went, in the older parts of Oxford, Medburn House, Holywell, was roomy.

“Annette, don’t do any unpacking till after tea!” cried Lady Constance.  “Just get the boxes carried up, and rest a bit.  I’ll come and help you later.”

The maid said nothing.  Her lips seemed tightly compressed.  She stepped into the hall, and spoke peremptorily to the white-capped parlourmaid who stood bewildered among the trunks.