are relations of mine."

Constance excused herself, but scarcely with decision. Her plans, she
said, must depend upon her cousins. Falloden smiled and dropped the
subject for the moment. Then, as they moved on together through the
sinuous ways of the garden, flooded with the scent of hawthorns and
lilacs, towards the open tent crowded with folk at the farther end,
there leapt in both the same intoxicating sense of youth and strength,
the same foreboding of passion, half restlessness, and half
enchantment....

* * * * *

"I looked for you everywhere," said Sorell, as he made his way to
Constance through the crowd of departing guests in the college gateway.
"Where did you hide yourself? The Lord Chancellor was sad not to say
good-bye to you."

Constance summoned an answering tone of regret.

"How good of him! I was only exploring the garden--with Mr. Falloden."

At the name, there was a quick and stiffening change in Sorell's face.

"You knew him before? Yes--he told me. A queer fellow--very able. They
say he'll get his First. Well--we shall meet at the Eights and then
we'll make plans. Goodnight."

He smiled on her, and went his way, ruminating uncomfortably as he
walked back to his college along the empty midnight streets. Falloden?
It was to be hoped there was nothing in that! How Ella Risborough would
have detested the type! But there was much that was not her mother in
the daughter. He vowed to himself that he would do his small best to
watch over Ella Risborough's child.

There was little or no conversation in the four-wheeler that bore the
Hooper party home. Mrs. Hooper and Alice were stiffly silent, while the
Reader chaffed Constance a little about her successes of the evening.
But he, too, was sleepy and tired, and the talk dropped. As they lighted
their bedroom candles in the hall, Mrs. Hooper said to her niece, in her
thin, high tone, mincing and coldly polite:

"I think it would have been better, Constance, if you had told us you
knew Lord Glaramara. I don't wish to find fault, but such--such
concealments--are really very awkward!"

Constance opened her eyes. She could have defended herself easily. She
had no idea that her aunt was unaware of the old friendship between her
parents and Lord Glaramara, who was no more interesting to her
personally than many others of their Roman _habitues_, of whom the world
was full. But she was too preoccupied to spend any but the sh