Falloden flushed hotly.
“You think she dislikes me? I’ll bet you anything you please she’ll be at the party to-night.”
Constance and her maid hurried home along the Broad. The girl perceived little or nothing on the way; but her face was crossed by a multitude of expressions, which meant a very active brain. Perhaps sarcasm or scorn prevailed, yet mingled sometimes with distress or perplexity.
The sight of the low gabled front of Medburn. House recalled her thoughts. She remembered her purchases and Nora’s disapproving eyes. It would be better to go and beard her uncle at once. But just as she approached the house, she became aware of a slenderly built man in flannels coming out of the gates of St. Cyprian’s, the college of which the gate and outer court stood next door to the Hoopers.
He saw her, stopped with a start of pleasure, and came eagerly towards her.
“Lady Constance! Where have you sprung from? Oh, I know—you are with the Hoopers! Have you been here long?”
They shook hands, and Constance obediently answered the newcomer’s questions. She seemed indeed to like answering them, and nothing could have been more courteous and kind than his manner of asking them. He was clearly a senior man, a don, who, after a strenuous morning of lecturing, was hurrying—in the festal Eights week—to meet some friends on the river. His face was one of singular charm, the features regular, the skin a pale olive, the hair and eyes intensely black. Whereas Falloden’s features seemed to lie, so to speak, on the surface, the mouth and eyes scarcely disturbing the general level of the face mask—no indentation in the chin, and no perceptible hollow tinder the brow,—this man’s eyes were deeply sunk, and every outline of the face—cheeks, chin and temples—chiselled and fined away into an almost classical perfection. The man’s aspect indeed was Greek, and ought only to have expressed the Greek blitheness, the Greek joy in life. But, in truth, it was a very modern and complex soul that breathed from both face and form.
Constance had addressed him as “Mr. Sorell.” He turned to walk with her to her door, talking eagerly. He was asking her about various friends in whose company they had last met—apparently at Rome; and he made various references to “your mother,” which Constance accepted gently, as though they pleased her.
They paused at the Hoopers’ door.