riends in Rome, with the full consent of
her guardian, the Oxford Reader, had carried her off, first to
Switzerland, and then to the Riviera for the winter, and now in May,
about a year after the death of her parents, she was coming for the
first time to make acquaintance with the Hooper family, with whom,
according to her father's will, she was to make her home till she was
twenty-one. None of them had ever seen her, except on two occasions;
once, at a hotel in London; and once, some ten years before this date,
when Lord Risborough had been D.C.L-ed at the Encaenia, as a reward for
some valuable gifts which he had made to the Bodleian, and he, his wife,
and his little girl, after they had duly appeared at the All Souls'
luncheon, and the official fete in St. John's Gardens, had found their
way to the house in Holywell, and taken tea with the Hoopers.

Nora's mind, as she and her sister sat waiting for the fly in which Mrs.
Hooper had gone to meet her husband's niece at the station, ran
persistently on her own childish recollections of this visit. She sat in
the window-sill, with her hand behind her, chattering to her sister.

"I remember thinking when Connie came in here to tea with us--'What a
stuck-up thing you are!' And I despised her, because she couldn't climb
the mulberry in the garden, and because she hadn't begun Latin. But all
the time, I envied her horribly, and I expect you did too, Alice. Can't
you see her black silk stockings--and her new hat with those awfully
pretty flowers, made of feathers? She had a silk frock too--white, very
skimp, and short; and enormously long black legs, as thin as sticks; and
her hair in plaits. I felt a thick lump beside her. And I didn't like
her at all. What horrid toads children are! She didn't talk to us much,
but her eyes seemed to be always laughing at us, and when she talked
Italian to her mother, I thought she was showing off, and I wanted to
pinch her for being affected."

"Why, of course she talked Italian," said Alice, who was not much
interested in her sister's recollections.

"Naturally. But that didn't somehow occur to me. After all I was only
seven."

"I wonder if she's really good-looking," said Alice slowly, glancing, as
she spoke, at the reflection of herself in an old dilapidated mirror,
which hung on the schoolroom wall.

"The photos are," said Nora decidedly. "Goodness, I wish she'd come and
get it over. I want to get back to my work--and till she com