At last she was safe in her own room again. The door was locked, and the more agreeable part of the crime began. She drew out the new cheque-book lying in her own drawer, and very slowly and deliberately wrote a cheque. Then she put it up, with a few covering words—anxiously considered—and addressed the envelope to the Oxford branch of a well-known banking firm, her father’s bankers, to which her own account had been transferred on her arrival at Oxford. Ewen Hooper had scrupulously refrained from recommending his own bank, lest he should profit indirectly by his niece’s wealth.
“Annette shall take it,” she thought, “first thing. Oh, what a row there’ll be!”
And then, uneasily pleased with her performance, she went to bed.
And she had soon forgotten all about her raid upon Uncle Ewen’s affairs. Her thoughts floated to a little cottage on the hills, and its two coming inhabitants. And in her dream she seemed to hear herself say—“I oughtn’t to be meddling with other people’s lives like this. I don’t know enough. I’m too young! I want somebody to show me—I do!”
The following day passed heavily in the Hooper household. Nora and her father were closeted together all the morning; and there was a sense of brooding calamity in the air. Alice and Connie avoided each other, and Connie asked no questions. After luncheon Sorell called. He found Connie in the drawing-room alone, and gave her the news she was pining for. As Nora had reported, a cottage on Boar’s Hill had been taken. It belonged to the head of an Oxford college, who had spent the preceding winter there for his health, but had now been ordered abroad. It was very small, pleasantly furnished, and had a glorious view over Oxford in the hollow, the wooded lines of Garsington and Nuneham, and the distant ridges of the Chilterns. Radowitz was expected the following day, and his old college servant, with a woman to cook and do housework, had been found to look after him. He was working hard, at his symphony, and was on the whole much the same in health—very frail and often extremely irritable; with alternations of cheerfulness and depression.
“And Mr. Falloden?” Connie ventured.
“He’s coming soon—I didn’t ask,” said Sorell shortly. “That arrangement won’t last long.”
Connie hesitated.
“But don’t wish it to fail!” she said piteously.