vily--"it's all wrong. But--I give in.
What I said was a lie. There is nothing else in the world that we could
possibly do."

And she rushed out of the room without another word. Connie looked
wistfully after her. Nora's pain in receiving had stirred in her the
shame-faced distress in giving that lives in generous souls. "Why should
I have more than they?"

She stole out after Nora. Ewen Hooper was left staring at the letter
from his bankers, and trying to collect his thoughts. Connie's voice was
still in his ears. It had all the sweetness of his dead sister's.

* * * * *

Connie was reading in her room before dinner. She had shut herself up
there, feeling rather battered by the emotions of the afternoon, when
she heard a knock that she knew was Nora's.

"Come in!"

Nora appeared. She had had her storm of weeping in private and got over
it. She was now quite composed, but the depression, the humiliation
even, expressed in her whole bearing dismayed Connie afresh.

Nora took a seat on the other side of the fire. Connie eyed her
uneasily.

"Are you ever going to forgive me, Nora?" she said, at last.

Nora shrugged her shoulders.

"You couldn't help it. I see that."

"Thank you," said Connie meekly.

"But what I can't forgive is that you never said a word--"

"To you? That you might undo it all? Nora, you really are an absurd
person!" Connie sprang up, and came to kneel by the fire, so that she
might attack her cousin at close quarters. "We're told it's 'more
blessed to give than to receive.' Not when you're on the premises, Nora!
I really don't think you need make me feel such an outcast! I say--how
many nights have you been awake lately?"

Nora's lip quivered a little.

"That doesn't matter," she said shortly.

"Yes, but it does matter! You promised to be my friend--and--you have
been treating me abominably!" said Connie, with flashing eyes.

Nora feebly defended herself, but was soon reduced to accept a pair of
arms thrown round her, and a soft shoulder on which to rest an
aching head.

"I'm no good," she said desparingly. "I give up--everything."

"That's all right!" Connie's tone was extremely cheerful. "Which means,
I hope, that you'll give up that absurd copying in the Bodleian. You get
about twopence halfpenny for it, and it'll cost you your first-class.
How are you going to get a First I should like to know, with your head
full of bills, and no sleep at night