city. "I'll take Mr. Radowitz's bouquet."

"Then, of course, Lord Meyrick will feel snubbed. Serve him right! He
shouldn't be so absurdly fond of Mr. Falloden!"

Nora was quite aware that she might be provoking Constance. She did it
with her eyes open. Her curiosity and concern after what Alice had told
her of the preceding night's ball were becoming hard to conceal. Would
Connie really engage herself to that horrid man?

But no rise could be got out of Constance. She said nothing. Annette
appeared, and the important business of hair-dressing went forward.
Nora, however, had yet another fly to throw.

"Alice passed Mr. Falloden on the river this afternoon--he was with the
Mansons, and another lady, an awfully pretty person. Mr. Falloden was
teaching her to row. Nobody knew who she was. But she and he seemed
great friends. Alice saw them also walking about together at Iffley,
while the others were having tea."

"Indeed?" said Constance. "Annette, I think I'll wear my black after
all--the black tulle, and my pearls."

Annette unwillingly hung up the "creation."

"You'd have looked a dream in it, my lady. Why ever won't you wear it?"

But Constance was obstinate. And very soon she stood robed in clouds of
black tulle and jet, from which her delicate neck and arms, and her
golden-brown head stood out with brilliant effect. Nora, still sitting
on the bed, admired her hugely. "She'll look like that when she's
married," she thought, by which she meant that the black had added a
certain proud--even a sombre--stateliness to Connie's good looks.

"Now my pearls, Annette."

"Won't you have some flowers, my lady?"

"No. Not one. Only my pearls."

Annette brought them, from the locked dressing-case under her own bed
where she jealously kept them. They were famous pearls and many of them.
One string was presently wound in and out through the coils of hair that
crowned the girl's delicate head; the other string coiled twice round
her neck and hung loose over the black dress. They were her only
ornament of any kind, but they were superb.

Connie looked at herself uneasily in the glass.

"I suppose I oughtn't to wear them," she said doubtfully.

"Why?" said Nora, staring with all her eyes. "They're lovely!"

"I suppose girls oughtn't to wear such things. I--I never have worn
them, since--mamma's death."

"They belonged to her?"

"Of course. And to papa's mother. She bought them in Rome. It was said
they belonged to