“But don’t wish it to fail!” she said piteously.
“I think the sooner it is over the better,” said Sorell, with rather stern decision. “Falloden ought never to have made the proposal, and it was mere caprice in Otto to accept it. But you know what I think. I shall watch the whole thing very anxiously; and try to have some one ready to put into Falloden’s place—when it breaks down. Mrs. Mulholland and I have it in hand. She’ll take Otto up to the cottage to-morrow, and means to mother Radowitz as much as he’ll let her. Now then”—he changed the subject with a smile—“are you going to enjoy your winter term?”
His dark eyes, as she met them, were full of an anxious affection.
“Oh no—not in a month. Prepare me a hundred lines of the ‘Odyssey,’ Book VI.! Next week I shall have some time. This first week is always a drive. Miss Nora says she’ll go on again.”
“Ah, yes—she’s got some work for the University Press. Plucky little thing! But she mustn’t overdo it.”
Connie dropped the subject. These conferences in the study, which had gone on all day, had nothing to do with Nora’s work for the Press—that she was certain of. But she only said—holding out her hands, with the free gesture that was natural to her—
“I wish some one would give me the chance of ‘overdoing it’! Do set me to work—hard work! The sun never shines here.”
Her eyes wandered petulantly to the rainy sky outside, and the high-walled college opposite.
“Southerner! Wait till you see it shining on the Virginia creeper in our garden quad. Oxford is a dream in October!—just for a week or two, till the leaves fall. November is dreary, I admit. All the same—try and be happy!”
He looked at her gravely and tenderly. She coloured a little as she withdrew her hands.
“Happy? That doesn’t matter—does it? But perhaps for a change—one might try—”
“Well!”—she laughed, but he thought there were tears in her eyes—“to do something—for somebody—occasionally.”
“Ask Mrs. Mulholland! She has a genius for that kind of thing. Teach some of her orphans!”
Sorell, rather puzzled, suggested that she might become a Home Student like Nora, and go in for a Literature or Modern History Certificate. Connie, who was now sitting moodily over a grate with no fire in it, with her chin in her hands, only shook her head.