An ominous quotation, if she had only remembered at the time where it came from!  For really his ways were those of a modern Petruchio—­ways that no girl of any decent spirit could endure.

Yet how frank and charming had been his talk as they rode into the wood!—­talk of his immediate plans, which he seemed to lay at her feet, asking for her sympathy and counsel; of his father and his two sisters; of the Hoopers even.  About them, his new tone was no doubt a trifle patronising, but still, quite tolerable.  Ewen Hooper, he vowed, was “a magnificent scholar,” and it was too bad that Oxford had found nothing better for him than “a scrubby readership.”  But “some day, of course, he’ll have the regius professorship.”  Nora was “a plucky little thing—­though she hates me!” And he, Falloden, was not so sure after all that Miss Alice would not land her Pryce.  “Can’t we bring it about?”

And Falloden ran, laughing, through a catalogue of his own smart or powerful relations, speculating what could be done.  It was true, wasn’t it, that Pryce was anxious to turn his back on Oxford and the higher mathematics, and to try his luck in journalism, or politics?  Well, Falloden happened to know that an attractive post in the Conservative Central Office would soon be vacant; an uncle of his was a very important person on the Council; that and other wires might be pulled.  Constance, eagerly, began to count up her own opportunities of the same kind; and between them, they had soon—­in imagination—­captured the post.  Then, said Falloden, it would be for Constance to clinch the matter.  No man could do such a thing decently.  Pryce would have to be told—­“’The world’s your oyster—­but before you open it, you will kindly go and propose to my cousin!—­which of course you ought to have done months ago!’”

And so laughing and plotting like a couple of children they had gone rambling through the green rides and glades of the wood, occasionally putting their horses to the gallop, that the pulse of life might run still faster.

But a later topic of conversation had brought them into even closer contact.  Connie spoke of her proposed visit to her aunts.  Falloden, radiant, could not conceal his delight.

“You will be only five miles from us.  Of course you must come and stay at Flood!  My mother writes they have collected a jolly party for the 12th.  I will tell her to write to you at once.  You must come!  You must!  Will you promise?”

And Constance, wondering at her own docility, had practically promised.  “I want you to know my people—­I want you to know my father!” And as he plunged again into talk about his father, the egotistical man of fashion disappeared; she seemed at last to have reached something sincere and soft, and true.

And then—­what had begun the jarring?  Was it—­first—­her account of her Greek lessons with Sorell?  Before she knew what had happened, the brow beside her had clouded, the voice had changed.  Why did she see so much of Sorell?  He, like Radowitz, was a poseur—­a wind-bag.  That was what made the attraction between them.  If she wished to learn Greek—­