Nor indeed had it answered so badly for him—for a time. She had given him children, and a home, though an uncomfortable one. Greek scholarship and Greek beauty were the real idols of his heart and imagination. They did not fail him. But his wife did him one conspicuous ill turn. From the first days of their marriage, she ran her husband badly into debt; and things had got slowly worse with the years. Mrs. Hooper was the most wasteful of managers; servants came and went interminably; and while money oozed away, there was neither comfort nor luxury to show for it. As the girls grew up, they learnt to dread the sound of the front doorbell, which so often meant an angry tradesman; and Ewen Hooper, now that he was turning grey, lived amid a perpetual series of mean annoyances with which he was never meant to cope, and which he was now beginning to hand over, helplessly, to his younger daughter Nora, the one member of the family who showed some power to deal with them. The situation had been almost acute, when Lord Risborough died. But there was a legacy in his will for Ewen Hooper which had given a breathing space; and Connie had readily consented to pay a year’s maintenance in advance. Yet still the drawer of bills, on which Nora kept anxious watch, was painfully full; and of late the perennial difficulty of ready money had reappeared. Mrs. Hooper declared she must have a new dress, if these invitations were to be accepted. “I don’t want anything extravagant,” she said fretfully. “But really it’s too bad of Nora to say that I could have my old blue one done up. She never seems to care how her mother looks. If all this fuss is going to be made about Constance and I am to take her out, I must be decent!” The small underhung mouth shut obstinately. These musts of her mother’s and Alice’s were Nora’s terror. They always meant a new bill. Alice said—“Of course! And especially when Constance dresses so extravagantly!” she added bitterly. “One can’t look like her scullery-maid!” Mrs. Hooper sighed. She glanced round her to see that the door was shut. “That silly child, Nora, had quite a scene with Connie this morning, because Connie offered to give her that pretty white dress in Brandon’s window. She told me Connie had insulted her. Such nonsense! Why shouldn’t Connie give her a dress—and you too? She has more money than she knows how to spend.” Alice did not reply. She, too, wanted new dresses; she could hardly endure the grace and costliness of Connie’s garments, when she compared them with her own; but there was something in her sad little soul also that would not let her be beholden to Connie. Not without a struggle, anyway. “I don’t want Connie to give me things either,” she said sulkily. “She’s never been the least nice to me. She makes a pet of Nora, and the rest of us might be doormats for all the notice she takes of us.”