“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 of trouble—and if she takes to imitating Connie, and wanting to go about without a chaperon, I don’t know what I shall do. My dear Ewen, do you know what I discovered last night?”
Mrs. Hooper rose and stood over her husband impressively.
“Well—what?”