Constance sat in the shadow of a plane-tree with Falloden
at her
feet
The tea-party at Mrs. Hooper’s
Lady Connie had stood entranced by the playing of
Radowitz
Connie sat down beside Radowitz and they looked at
each other
in silence
Lady Connie held in her horse, feeding her eyes upon
Flood Castle
and its woods
Herr Schwarz was examining a picture with a magnifying
glass when
Falloden entered
Douglas knelt, looking into his father’s face,
and Radowitz moved
farther away
“Well, now we’ve done all we can, and
all I mean to do,” said Alice Hooper, with a
pettish accent of fatigue. “Everything’s
perfectly comfortable, and if she doesn’t like
it, we can’t help it. I don’t know
why we make such a fuss.”
The speaker threw herself with a gesture of fatigue
into a dilapidated basket-chair that offered itself.
It was a spring day, and the windows of the old schoolroom
in which she and her sister were sitting were open
to a back garden, untidily kept, but full of fruit-trees
just coming into blossom. Through their twinkling
buds and interlacing branches could be seen grey college
walls—part of the famous garden front of
St. Cyprian’s College, Oxford. There seemed
to be a slight bluish mist over the garden and the
building, a mist starred with patches of white and
dazzlingly green leaf. And, above all, there was
an evening sky, peaceful and luminous, from which
a light wind blew towards the two girls sitting by
the open window. One, the elder, had a face like
a Watteau sketch, with black velvety eyes, hair drawn
back from a white forehead, delicate little mouth,
with sharp indentations at the corners, and a small
chin. The other was much more solidly built—a
girl of seventeen, in a plump phase, which however
an intelligent eye would have read as not likely to
last; a complexion of red and brown tanned by exercise;
an expression in her clear eyes which was alternately
frank and ironic; and an inconvenient mass of golden
brown hair.
“We make a fuss, my dear,” said the younger
sister, “because we’re bound to make a
fuss. Connie, I understand, is to pay us a good
round sum for her board and lodging, so it’s
only honest she should have a decent room.”
“Yes, but you don’t know what she’ll
call decent,” said the other rather sulkily.
“She’s probably been used to all sorts
of silly luxuries.”
“Why of course, considering Uncle Risborough
was supposed to have twenty-odd thousand a year.
We’re paupers, and she’s got to put up
with us. But we couldn’t take her money
and do nothing in return.”
