“She heard me say to Sorell, apparently, that I would give my eyes for it, and couldn’t afford it.  That was a week ago.  And to-day, after luncheon, she stole in here like a mouse—­you none of you saw or heard her—­holding the books behind her—­and looking as meek as milk.  You would have thought she was a child, coming to say she was sorry!  And she gave me the books in the prettiest way—­just like her mother!—­as though all the favour came from me.  I’m beginning to be very fond of her.  She’s so nice to your old father.  I say, Nora!”—­he held her again—­“you and I have got to prevent her from marrying the wrong man!”

Nora shook her head, with an air of middle-aged wisdom.

“Connie will marry whomever she has a mind to!” she said firmly.  “And it’s no good, father, you imagining anything else.”

Ewen Hooper laughed, released her, and sent her to bed.

The days that followed represented the latter part of the interval between the Eights and Commemoration, before Oxford plunged once more into high festival.

It was to be a brilliant Commem.; for an ex-Viceroy of India, a retired Ambassador, England’s best General, and five or six foreign men of science and letters, of rather exceptional eminence, were coming to get their honorary degrees.  When Mrs. Hooper, Times in hand, read out at the breakfast-table the names of Oxford’s expected guests, Constance Bledlow looked up in surprised amusement.  It seemed the Ambassador and she were old friends; that she had sat on his knee as a baby through various Carnival processions in the Corso, showing him how to throw confetti; and that he and Lady F. had given a dance at the Embassy for her coming-out, when Connie, at seventeen, and His Excellency—­still the handsomest man in the room, despite years and gout—­had danced the first waltz together, and a subsequent minuet; which—­though Connie did not say so—­had been the talk of Rome.

As to the ex-Viceroy, he was her father’s first cousin, and had passed through Rome on his way east, staying three or four days at the Palazzo Barberini.  Constance, however, could not be induced to trouble her head about him.  “He bored Mamma and me dreadfully,” she said—­“he had seven pokers up his back, and was never human for a minute.  I don’t want to see him at all.”  Oxford, however, seemed to be of the opinion that ex-viceroys do want to see their cousins; for the Hooper party found themselves asked as a matter of course to the All Souls’ luncheon, the Vice-Chancellor’s garden-party, and to a private dinner-party in Christ Church on the day of the Encaenia, at which all the new-made doctors were to be present.  As for the ball-tickets for Commem. week, they poured in; and meanwhile there were endless dinner-parties, and every afternoon had its river picnic, now on the upper, now on the lower river.