tress's brown hair. Had not Falloden himself arranged this whole
adventure ahead?--found her a horse and groom, while she was still in
the stage of thinking about them, and settled the place of rendezvous?

She could not deny it; but her obstinate confidence in her own powers
and will was not thereby in the least affected. She was going because it
amused her to go; not because he prescribed it.

The following day, Saturday, witnessed an unexpected stream of callers
on Mrs. Hooper. She was supposed to be at home on Saturday afternoons to
undergraduates; but the undergraduates who came were few and shy. They
called out of respect for the Reader, whose lectures they attended and
admired. But they seldom came a second time; for although Alice had her
following of young men, it was more amusing to meet her anywhere else
than under the eyes of her small, peevish mother, who seemed to be able
to talk of nothing else than ailments and tabloids, and whether the Bath
or the Buxton waters were the better for her own kind of rheumatism.

On this afternoon, however, the Hoopers' little drawing-room and the
lawn outside were crowded with folk. Alexander Sorell arrived early, and
found Constance in a white dress strolling up and down the lawn under a
scarlet parasol and surrounded by a group of men with whom she had made
acquaintance on the Christ Church barge. She received him with a
pleasure, an effusion, which made a modest man blush.

"This is nice of you!--I wondered whether you'd come!"

"I thought you'd seen too much of me this week already!" he said,
smiling--"but I wanted to arrange with you when I might take you to call
on the Master of Beaumont. To-morrow?"

"I shall be plucked, you'll see! You'll be ashamed of me."

"I'll take my chance. To-morrow then, at four o'clock before chapel?"

Constance nodded--"Delighted!"--and was then torn from him by her uncle,
who had fresh comers to introduce to her. But Sorell was quite content
to watch her from a distance, or to sit talking in a corner with Nora,
whom he regarded as a child,--"a jolly, clever, little thing!"--while
his mind was full of Constance.

The mere sight of her--the slim willowy creature, with her
distinguished head and her beautiful eyes--revived in him the memory of
some of his happiest and most sacred hours. It was her mother who had
produced upon his own early maturity one of those critical impressions,
for good or evil, which men so sensitive and finel