"Oh, the servants will look after her," said Alice indifferently.

"Everybody has to look after Annette!--or she'll know the reason why,"
laughed Lady Constance, removing her black gloves from a very small and
slender hand. She was dressed in deep mourning with crape still upon her
hat and dress, though it was more than a year since her mother's death.
Such mourning was not customary in Oxford, and Alice Hooper thought
it affected.

Mrs. Hooper then made the tea. But the newcomer paid little attention to
the cup placed beside her. Her eyes wandered round the group at the
tea-table, her uncle, a man of originally strong physique, marred now by
the student's stoop, and by weak eyes, tried by years of Greek and
German type; her aunt--

"What a very odd woman Aunt Ellen is!" thought Constance.

For, all the way from the station, Mrs. Hooper had talked about scarcely
anything but her own ailments, and the Oxford climate. "She told us all
about her rheumatisms--and the east winds--and how she ought to go to
Buxton every year--only Uncle Hooper wouldn't take things seriously. And
she never asked us anything at all about our passage, or our night
journey! And there was Annette--as yellow as an egg--and as _cross_--"

However Dr. Hooper was soon engaged in making up for his wife's
shortcomings. He put his niece through many questions as to the year
which had elapsed since her parent's death; her summer in the high Alps,
and her winter at Cannes.