As she washed her hands, her thoughts were very busy with the incidents of her morning’s walk.  The colours had suddenly freshened in the Oxford world.  No doubt she had expected them to freshen; but hardly so soon.  A tide of life welled up in her—­a tide of pleasure.  And as she stood a moment beside the open window of her room before going down, looking at the old Oxford garden just beneath her, and the stately college front beyond, Oxford itself began to capture her, touching her magically, insensibly, as it had touched the countless generations before her.  She was the child of two scholars, and she had been brought up in a society both learned and cosmopolitan, traversed by all the main currents and personalities of European politics, but passionate all the same for the latest find in the Forum, the newest guesses in criticism, for any fresh light that the present could shed upon the past.  And when she looked back upon the moments of those Roman years which had made the sharpest mark upon her, she saw three figures stand out—­her gracious and graceful mother; her father, student and aristocrat, so eagerly occupied with life that he had scarcely found the time to die; and Mr. Sorell, her mother’s friend, and then her own.  Together—­all four—­they had gone to visit the Etruscan tombs about Viterbo, they had explored Norba and Ninfa, and had spent a marvellous month at Syracuse.

“And I have never seen him since papa’s death!—­and I have only heard from him twice.  I wonder why?” She pondered it resentfully.  And yet what cause of offence had she?  At Cannes, had she thought much about him?  In that scene, so troubled and feverish, compared with the old Roman days, there had been for her, as she well knew, quite another dominating figure.

“Just the same!” she thought angrily.  “Just as domineering—­and provoking.  Boggling about Uncle Ewen’s name, as if it was not worth his remembering!  I shall compel him to be civil to my relations, just because it will annoy him so much.”

At lunch Constance declared prettily that she would be delighted to go to the Vice-Chancellor’s party.  Nora sat silent through the meal.

After lunch, Connie went to talk to her aunt about the incoming furniture.  Mrs. Hooper made no difficulties at all.  The house had long wanted these additions, only there had been no money to buy them with.  Now Mrs. Hooper felt secretly certain that Constance, when she left them, would not want to take the things with her, so that she looked on Connie’s purchases of the morning as her own prospective property.

A furniture van appeared early in the afternoon with the things.  Nora hovered about the hall, severely dumb, while they were being carried upstairs.  Annette gave all the directions.

But when later on Connie was sitting at her new writing-table contemplating her transformed room with a childish satisfaction, Nora knocked and came in.

She walked up to Connie, and stood looking down upon her.  She was very red, and her eyes sparkled.