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.
“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?”
“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 nights?”
“I want to earn my living—I mean to earn my living! And how do you know—after all”—she held Connie at arm’s length—“that Mr. Sorell’s going to approve of what you’ve done? And father won’t accept, unless he does.”
“Mr. Sorell will do—exactly what pleases me. Mr. Sorell”—she began to search for a cigarette—“Mr. Sorell is an angel.”
A silence. Connie looked up, rather surprised.
Connie observed her. A flickering light began to play in the brown eyes.
“H’m. Have you been doing some Greek already?—stealing a march on me?”
“Had you? The first I’ve heard of it!” Connie fluttered up and down the room in her white dressing-gown, occasionally breaking into a dance-step, as though to work off a superfluity of spirits.
Finally she stopped in front of Nora, looking her up and down.
“I dare you to hide anything again from me, Nora!”
“There is nothing to hide,” she said stiffly.
Connie laughed aloud; and Nora suddenly sprang from her chair, and ran out of the room.
Connie was left panting a little. Life in Medburn House seemed certainly to be running faster than of old!