ribed her as a girl
"with a real talent for flirtation and an engaging penury of mind."
Pryce thought the description good. She could be really engaging
sometimes, when she was happy and amused, and properly dressed. But ever
since the appearance of Constance Bledlow she seemed to have suffered
eclipse; to have grown plain and dull.

He stayed talking to her, however, a little while, seeing that Constance
Bledlow had gone indoors; and then he departed. Alice ran upstairs,
locked her door, and stood looking at herself in the glass. She hated
her dress, her hat, the way she had done her hair. The image of
Constance in her white silk hat with its drooping feathers, her
delicately embroidered dress and the necklace on her shapely throat,
tormented her. She was sick with envy--and with fear. For months she had
clung to the belief that Herbert Pryce would ask her to marry him. And
now all expectation of the magic words was beginning to fade from her
mind. In one short week, as it seemed to her, she had been utterly
eclipsed and thrown aside. Bob Vernon too, whose fancy for her, as shown
in various winter dances, had made her immensely proud, he being then in
that momentary limelight which flashes on the Blue, as he passes over
the Oxford scene--Vernon had scarcely had a word for her. She never knew
that he cared about pictures! And there was Connie--knowing everything
about pictures!--able to talk about everything! As she had listened to
Connie's talk, she had felt fairly bewildered. Of course it was no
credit to Connie to be able to rattle off all those names and things. It
was because she had lived in Italy. And no doubt a great deal of it was
showing off.

All the same, poor miserable Alice felt a bitter envy of Connie's
opportunities.

CHAPTER VI

"My brother will be here directly. He wants to show you his special
books," said Miss Wenlock shyly.

The Master's sister was a small and withered lady, who had been
something of a beauty, and was now the pink of gentle and middle-aged
decorum. She was one of those women it is so easy to ignore till you
live with them. Then you perceive that in their relations to their own
world, the world they make and govern, they are of the stuff which holds
a country together, without which a country can not exist. She might
have come out of a Dutch picture--a Terburg or a Metsu--so exquisite was
she in every detail--her small, white head, her regular features, the
lace coif tied