stated in Nora's best hand. The total at the foot evoked a low whistle
from Connie. How had it come about? In spite of her luxurious bringing
up, there was a shrewd element--an element of competence--in the girl's
developing character, which was inclined to suggest that there need be
no more difficulty in living on seven hundred a year than seven
thousand, if you knew you had to do it. Then she rebuked herself
fiercely for a prig--"You just try it!--you Pharisee, you!" And she
thought of her own dressmakers' and milliners' bills, and became in the
end quite pitiful over Aunt Ellen's moderation. After all it might have
been two thousand instead of one! Of course it was all Aunt Ellen's
muddling, and Uncle Ewen's absent-mindedness.

She shaded her candle, and in a guilty hurry copied down the total on a
slip of paper lying on the table, and took the address of Uncle Ewen's
bank from the outside of the pass-book lying beside the bills. Having
done that, she Closed the drawer again, and crept upstairs like the
criminal she felt herself. Her small feet in their thin stockings seemed
to her excited ears to be making the most hideous and unnatural noise on
every step. If Nora heard!

At last she was safe in her own room again. The door was locked, and the
more agreeable part of the crime began. She drew out the new
cheque-book lying in her own drawer, and very slowly and deliberately
wrote a cheque. Then she put it up, with a few covering words--anxiously
considered--and addressed the envelope to the Oxford branch of a
well-known banking firm, her father's bankers, to which her own account
had been transferred on her arrival at Oxford. Ewen Hooper had
scrupulously refrained from recommending his own bank, lest he should
profit indirectly by his niece's wealth.

"Annette shall take it," she thought, "first thing. Oh, what a row
there'll be!"

And then, uneasily pleased with her performance, she went to bed.

And she had soon forgotten all about her raid upon Uncle Ewen's affairs.
Her thoughts floated to a little cottage on the hills, and its two
coming inhabitants. And in her dream she seemed to hear herself say--"I
oughtn't to be meddling with other people's lives like this. I don't
know enough. I'm too young! I want somebody to show me--I do!"

* * * * *

The following day passed heavily in the Hooper household. Nora and her
father were closeted together all the morning; and there was a