ause Ewen had
hustled her off so much too soon to the station.

"I don't think we know him," she said vaguely, turning towards Alice.

"We know all about him. He was introduced to me once."

The tone of the eldest Miss Hooper could scarcely have been colder. The
eyes of the girl opposite suddenly sparkled into laughter.

"You didn't like him?"

"Nobody does. He gives himself such ridiculous airs."

"Does he?" said Constance. The information seemed to be of no interest
to her. She asked for another cup of tea.

"Oh, Falloden of Marmion?" said Dr. Hooper. "I know him quite well. One
of the best pupils I have. But I understand he's the heir to his old
uncle, Lord Dagnall, and is going to be enormously rich. His father's a
millionaire already. So of course he'll soon forget his Greek. A
horrid waste!"

"He's detested in college!" Alice's small face lit up vindictively.
"There's a whole set of them. Other people call them 'the bloods.' The
dons would like to send them all down."

"They won't send Falloden down, my dear, before he gets his First in
Greats, which he will do this summer. But this is his last term. I never
knew any one write better Greek iambics than that fellow," said the
Reader, pausing in the middle of his cup of tea to murmur certain Greek
lines to himself. They were part of the brilliant copy of verses by
which Douglas Falloden of Marmion, in a fiercely contested year, had
finally won the Ireland, Ewen Hooper being one of the examiners.

"That's what's so abominable," said Alice, setting her small mouth.
"You don't expect reading men to drink, and get into rows."

"Drink?" said Constance Bledlow, raising her eyebrows.

Alice went into details. The dons of Marmion, she said, were really
frightened by the spread of drinking in college, all caused by the bad
example of the Falloden set. She talked fast and angrily, and her cousin
listened, half scornfully, but still attentively.

"Why don't they keep him in order?" she said at last. "We did!" And she
made a little gesture with her hand, impatient and masterful, as though
dismissing the subject.

And at that moment Nora came into the room, flushed either with physical
exertion, or the consciousness of her own virtue. She found a place at
the tea-table, and panting a little demanded to be fed.

"It's hungry work, carrying up trunks!"

"You didn't!" exclaimed Constance, in large-eyed astonishment. "I say, I
am sorry! Why did you? I'm sure they