mly. "They were awfully good to
me."

"Cannes was very gay, I suppose?"

"We saw a great many people in the afternoons. The Kings knew everybody.
But I didn't go out in the evenings."

"You weren't strong enough?"

"I was in mourning," said the girl, looking at him with her large and
brilliant eyes.

"Yes, yes, of course!" murmured the Reader, not quite understanding why
he felt himself a trifle snubbed. He asked a few more questions, and his
niece, who seemed to have no shyness, gave a rapid description, as she
sipped her tea, of the villa at Cannes in which she had passed the
winter months, and of the half dozen families, with whom she and her
friends had been mostly thrown. Alice Hooper was secretly thrilled by
some of the names which dropped out casually. She always read the
accounts in the _Queen_, or the _Sketch_, of "smart society" on the
Riviera, and it was plain to her that Constance had been dreadfully "in
it." It would not apparently have been possible to be more "in it." She
was again conscious of a hot envy of her cousin which made her unhappy.
Also Connie's good looks were becoming more evident. She had taken off
her hat, and all the distinction of her small head, her slender neck and
sloping shoulders, was more visible; her self-possession, too, the ease
and vivacity of her gestures. Her manner was that of one accustomed to a
large and varied world, who took all things without surprise, as they
came. Dr. Hooper had felt some emotion, and betrayed some, in this
meeting with his sister's motherless child; but the girl's only betrayal
of feeling had lain in the sharpness with which she had turned away from
her uncle's threatened effusion. "And how she looks at us!" thought
Alice. "She looks at us through and through. Yet she doesn't stare."

But at that moment Alice heard the word "prince," and her attention was
instantly arrested.

"We had some Russian neighbours," the newcomer was saying; "Prince and
Princess Jaroslav; and they had an English party at Christmas. It was
great fun. They used to take us out riding into the mountains, or into
Italy." She paused a moment, and then said carelessly--as though to keep
up the conversation--"There was a Mr. Falloden with them--an
undergraduate at Marmion College, I think. Do you know him, Aunt Ellen?"
She turned towards her aunt.

But Mrs. Hooper only looked blank. She was just thinking anxiously that
she had forgotten to take her tabloids after lunch, bec