tea with her--a wedding visit if you
please! I think it was because one of the kangaroos at Blenheim had just
died in childbirth. I told her it was a mercy, considering that any of
them would hug us to death if they got a chance. Are you a
sentimentalist, Lady Constance?" Mrs. Mulholland turned gaily to the
girl beside her, but still with the same touch of something coolly
observant in her manner.

Constance laughed.

"I never can cry when I ought to," she said lightly.

"Then you should go to tea with Mrs. Crabbett. She could train anybody
to cry--in time. She cultivates with care, and waters with tears, every
sorrow that blows! Most of us run away from our troubles, don't we?"

Constance again smiled assent. But suddenly her face stiffened. It was
like a flower closing, or a light blown out.

Mrs. Mulholland thought--"She has lost a father and a mother within a
year, and I have reminded her. I am a cruel, clumsy wretch."

And thenceforward she roared so gently that Miss Wenlock, who never said
a malicious thing herself, and was therefore entirely dependent on Sarah
Mulholland's tongue for the salt of life, felt herself cheated of her
usual Sunday entertainment. For there were few Sundays in term-time when
Mrs. Mulholland did not "drop in" for tea and talk at Beaumont before
going on to the Cathedral service.

But under the gentleness, Constance opened again, and expanded. Mrs.
Mulholland seemed to watch her with increasing kindness. At last, she
said abruptly--

"I have already heard of you from two charming young men."

Constance opened a pair of conscious eyes. It was as though she were
always expecting to hear Falloden's name, and protecting herself against
the shock of it. But the mistake was soon evident.

"Otto Radowitz told me you had been so kind to him! He is an
enthusiastic boy, and a great friend of mine. He deals always in
superlatives. That is so refreshing here in Oxford where we are all so
clever that we are deadly afraid of each other, and everybody talks
drab. And his music is divine! I hear they talk of him in Paris as
another Chopin. He passed his first degree examination the other day
magnificently! Come and hear him some evening at my house. Jim Meyrick,
too, has told me all about you. His mother is a cousin of mine, and he
condescends occasionally to come and see me. He is, I understand, a
'blood.' All I know is that he would be a nice youth, if he had a little
more will of his own, a