sense of
brooding calamity in the air. Alice and Connie avoided each other, and
Connie asked no questions. After luncheon Sorell called. He found Connie
in the drawing-room alone, and gave her the news she was pining for. As
Nora had reported, a cottage on Boar's Hill had been taken. It belonged
to the head of an Oxford college, who had spent the preceding winter
there for his health, but had now been ordered abroad. It was very
small, pleasantly furnished, and had a glorious view over Oxford in the
hollow, the wooded lines of Garsington and Nuneham, and the distant
ridges of the Chilterns. Radowitz was expected the following day, and
his old college servant, with a woman to cook and do housework, had been
found to look after him. He was working hard, at his symphony, and was
on the whole much the same in health--very frail and often extremely
irritable; with alternations of cheerfulness and depression.

"And Mr. Falloden?" Connie ventured.

"He's coming soon--I didn't ask," said Sorell shortly. "That arrangement
won't last long."

Connie hesitated.

"But don't wish it to fail!" she said piteously.

"I think the sooner it is over the better," said Sorell, with rather
stern decision. "Falloden ought never to have made the proposal, and it
was mere caprice in Otto to accept it. But you know what I think. I
shall watch the whole thing very anxiously; and try to have some one
ready to put into Falloden's place--when it breaks down. Mrs. Mulholland
and I have it in hand. She'll take Otto up to the cottage to-morrow, and
means to mother Radowitz as much as he'll let her. Now then"--he changed
the subject with a smile--"are you going to enjoy your winter term?"

His dark eyes, as she met them, were full of an anxious affection.

"I have forgotten all my Greek!"

"Oh no--not in a month. Prepare me a hundred lines of the 'Odyssey,'
Book VI.! Next week I shall have some time. This first week is always a
drive. Miss Nora says she'll go on again."

"Does she? She seems so--so busy."

"Ah, yes--she's got some work for the University Press. Plucky little
thing! But she mustn't overdo it."

Connie dropped the subject. These conferences in the study, which had
gone on all day, had nothing to do with Nora's work for the Press--that
she was certain of. But she only said--holding out her hands, with the
free gesture that was natural to her--

"I wish some one would give me the chance of 'overdoing it'! Do set me
to work--ha