all and slim in it and very foreign. Her maid clasped a
long string of opals, which was her only ornament, about her neck. She
gave one look at herself in the glass, holding herself proudly, one
might have said arrogantly. But as she turned away, and so that Annette
could not see her, she raised the opals, and held them a moment softly
to her lips. Her mother had habitually worn them. Then she moved to the
window, and looked out over the Hoopers' private garden, to the
spreading college lawns, and the grey front beyond.

"Am I really going to stay here a whole year--nearly?" she asked
herself, half laughing, half rebellious.

Then her eye fell upon a medley of photographs; snaps from her own
camera, which had tumbled out of her bag in unpacking. The topmost one
represented a group of young men and maidens standing under a group of
stone pines in a Riviera landscape. She herself was in front, with a
tall youth beside her. She bent down to look at it.

"I shall come across him I suppose--before long." And raising herself,
she stood awhile, thinking; her face alive with an excitement that was
half expectation, and half angry recollection.

CHAPTER II

"My dear Ellen, I beg you will not interfere any more with Connie's
riding. I have given leave, and that really must settle it. She tells me
that her father always allowed her to ride alone--with a groom--in
London and the Campagna; she will of course pay all the expenses of it
out of her own income, and I see no object whatever in thwarting her.
She is sure to find our life dull enough anyway, after the life she has
been living."

"I don't know why you should call Oxford dull, Ewen!" said Mrs. Hooper
resentfully. "I consider the society here much better than anything
Connie was likely to see on the Riviera--much more respectable anyway.
Well, of course, everybody will call her fast--but that's your affair. I
can see already she won't be easily restrained. She's got an uncommonly
strong will of her own."

"Well, don't try and restrain her, dear, too much," laughed her husband.
"After all she's twenty, she'll be twenty-one directly. She may not be
more than a twelvemonth with us. She need not be, as far as my functions
are concerned. Let's make friends with her and make her happy."

"I don't want my girls talked about, thank you, Ewen!" His wife gave an
angry dig to the word "my." "Everybody says what a nice ladylike girl
Alice is. But Nora often gives me a deal o