began to talk Italian to her maid.

"I never saw anything like them!" said Nora stoutly.

Constance Bledlow took no notice. She and Annette were chattering fast,
and Nora could not understand a word. She stood by awkward and
superfluous, feeling certain that the maid who was gesticulating, now
towards the ceiling, and now towards the floor, was complaining both of
her own room and of the kitchen accommodation. Her mistress listened
carelessly, occasionally trying to soothe her, and in the middle of the
stream of talk, Nora slipped away.

"It's horrid!--spending all that money on yourself," thought the girl of
seventeen indignantly. "And in Oxford too!--as if anybody wanted such
things here."

* * * * *

Meanwhile, she was no sooner gone than her cousin sank down on the
armchair, and broke into a slightly hysterical fit of laughter.

"Can we stand it, Annette? We've got to try. Of course you can leave me
if you choose."

"And I should like to know how you'd get on then!" said Annette,
grimly, beginning again upon the boxes.

"Well, of course, I shouldn't get on at all. But really we might give
away a lot of these clothes! I shall never want them."