after-breakfast pipe, he looked down--frowning--upon his wife, and Mrs.
Hooper felt that she had perhaps gone too far. Never had she forgotten,
never had she ceased to resent her own sense of inferiority and
disadvantage, beside her brilliant sister-in-law on the occasion of that
long past visit. She could still see Ella Risborough at the All Souls'
luncheon given to the newly made D.C.Ls, sitting on the right of the
Vice-Chancellor, and holding a kind of court afterwards in the library;
a hat that was little more than a wreath of forget-me-nots on her dark
hair, and a long, lace cloak draping the still young and graceful
figure. She remembered vividly the soft, responsive eyes and smile, and
the court of male worshippers about them. Professors, tutors young and
old, undergraduates and heads of houses, had crowded round the mother
and the long-legged, distinguished-looking child, who clung so closely
to her side; and if only she could have given Oxford a few more days,
the whole place would have been at Ella Risborough's feet. "So
intelligent too!" said the enthusiastic--"so learned even!" A member of
the Roman "Accademia dei Lincei," with only one other woman to keep her
company in that august band; and yet so modest, so unpretending, so full
of laughter, and life, and sex! Mrs. Hooper, who generally found herself
at these official luncheons in a place which her small egotism resented,
had watched her sister-in-law from a distance, envying her dress, her
title, her wealth, bitterly angry that Ewen's sister should have a place
in the world that Ewen's wife could never hope to touch, and irrevocably
deciding that Ella Risborough was "fast" and gave herself airs. Nor did
the afternoon visit, when the Risboroughs, with great difficulty, had
made time for the family call on the Hoopers, supply any more agreeable
memories. Ella Risborough had been so rapturously glad to see her
brother, and in spite of a real effort to be friendly had had so little
attention to spare for his wife! It was true she had made much of the
Hooper children, and had brought them all presents from Italy. But Mrs.