Chapter Four.An Eavesdropper.The students at St. Benet’s were accustomed to unlimited licence in the matter of sitting up at night. At a certain hour the electric lights were put out, but each girl was well supplied with candles, and could sit up and pursue her studies into the small hours, if she willed.It was late when Priscilla left Maggie Oliphant’s room on this first night, but, long as her journey had been, and tired as she undoubtedly felt, the events of the evening had excited her, and she did not care to go to bed. Her fire was now burning well, and her room was warm and cosy. She drew the bolt of her door, and, unlocking her trunk, began to unpack. She was a methodical girl, and well trained. Miss Rachel Peel had instilled order into Priscilla from her earliest days, and she now quickly disposed of her small but neat wardrobe. Her linen would just fit into the drawers of the bureau. Her two or three dresses and jackets were hung tidily away behind the curtain which formed her wardrobe.Priscilla pushed her empty trunk against the wall, folded up the bits of string and paper which lay scattered about, and then, slowly undressing, she got into bed.She undressed with a certain sense of luxuriousness and pleasure. Her room began to look charming to her now that her things were unpacked, and the first sharp pain of her home-sickness was greatly softened since she had fallen in love with Maggie Oliphant.Priscilla had not often in the course of her life undressed by a fire, but then had she ever spent an evening like this one? All was fresh to her, new, exciting. Now she was really very tired, and the moment she laid her head on her pillow would doubtless be asleep.She got into bed, and, putting out her candle, lay down. The firelight played on the pale blue walls, and lit up the bold design of the briar-roses, which ran round the frieze at the top of the room.Priscilla wondered why she did not drop asleep at once. She felt vexed with herself when she discovered that each instant the chance of slumber was flying before her, that every moment her tired body became more restless and wide-awake. She could not help gazing at that scroll of briar-roses; she could not help thinking of the hand that had painted the flowers, of the girl whose presence had once made the room in which she now lay so charming.Priscilla had not yet been twelve hours at St. Benet’s, and yet almost every student she had met had spoken of Annabel Lee—had spoken of her with interest, with regret. One girl had gone further than this; she had breathed her name with bitter sorrow.Priscilla wished she had not been put into this room. She felt absolutely nervous; she had a sense of usurping someone else’s place, of turning somebody else out into the cold. She did not believe in ghosts, but she had an uncomfortable sensation, and it would not have greatly surprised her if Annabel had come gliding back in the night watches to put the finishing touches to those scrolls of wild flowers which ornamented the panels of the doors, and to the design of the briar-rose, which ran round the frieze of the room. Annabel might come in, and pursue this work in stealthy spirit fashion, and then glide up to her, and ask her to get out of this little white bed, and let the strange visitor, to whom it had once belonged, rest in it herself once more.Annabel Lee! It was a queer name—a wild, bewitching sort of a name—the name of a girl in a song.Priscilla knew many of Poe’s strange songs, and she found herself now murmuring some words which used to fascinate her long ago:—“And the angels, not half so happy in heaven,Went envying her and me;Yes! that was the reason (as all men knowIn this kingdom by the sea)That the wind came out of the cloud by night,Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee!“But our love it was stronger by far than the loveOf those who were older than we,—Of many far wiser than we;And neither the angels in heaven above,Nor the demons down under the sea,Can ever dissever my soul from the soulOf the beautiful Annabel Lee.”Some ashes fell from the expiring fire; Priscilla jumped up in bed with a start. Her heart was beating fast. She thought of Maggie’s exquisite face. She remembered it as she had seen it that night when they were sitting by the fire, as she had seen it last, when it turned so white, and the eyes blazed at her in anger.Priscilla stretched out her hand for a box of matches. She would light her candle, and, as there was no chance of her going to sleep, sit up, put her dressing-jacket on, and begin to write a long letter home to Aunt Raby and to her little sisters. Such methodical work would calm nerves not often so highly strung.She rose, and fetching her neat little leather writing-case from where she had placed it on the top of her bureau, prepared to open it.The little case was locked. Priscilla went over to her curtained wardrobe, pushed it aside, and felt in the pocket of the dress she had worn that day for her purse. It was not there. Within that purse the little key was safely hiding, but the purse itself was nowhere to be found.Priscilla looked all round the room. In vain; the neat brown-leather purse, which held the key, some very precious memoranda of different sorts, and her small store of worldly wealth, was nowhere to be found.She stood still for a moment in perplexity. All her nervous fears had now completely vanished; a real calamity and a grave one stared her in the face. Suppose her purse were gone? Suppose it had been stolen? The very small supply of money which that purse contained was most precious to Priscilla. It seemed to her that nothing could well be more terrible than for her now to have to apply to Aunt Raby for fresh funds. Aunt Raby had stinted herself dreadfully to get Priscilla’s modest little outfit together, and now—oh, she would rather starve than appeal to her again.Suddenly as she stood in the middle of her room a memory came back to her. It was the recollection of a very trivial incident. She remembered something dropping on the floor as she sat by Maggie’s side at dinner. She had felt too nervous and miserable at the time to take any notice of the slight sound made by the fall, but now it returned vividly to her memory. She was sure that her purse must have dropped out of her pocket at that moment, and was convinced that it was now lying quietly under the table where she had sat.Priscilla felt far too excited to wait until the morning to make herself sure on this point. No; happen what might, she would set her fears at rest now, and find her way somehow through the strange and sleeping house until she discovered her lost treasure.Partly re-dressing, she took her candle in her hand, and softly unhasped her door. It was a well-oiled lock, and made no click or noise of any kind as she turned the handle. When she opened the door wide it did not creak. The long corridor outside had a stone floor, and was richly carpeted. No fear of treacherous, creaking boards here. Priscilla prepared to walk briskly down the length of the corridor, when she was arrested by seeing a light streaming out of Maggie Oliphant’s room.The electric lights were all extinguished, and this light alone shone like a ray in the darkness.Prissie stood still, with a gasp of dismay. She did not want Maggie to hear her now. She would have been distressed at Maggie being acquainted with her carelessness. She felt sure that a girl like Maggie Oliphant could never understand what a little purse, which only contained a sovereign or two, would mean to her.On tiptoe, and shading the candle with her hand, she stole past the partly open door. A rich tapestry curtain hung at the other side, and Maggie doubtless thought the door was shut.Priscilla had almost gone past the open door, when her steps were again arrested by the sound of voices. Someone said “Priscilla Peel,” and then someone else laughed.Priscilla stood perfectly still. Of course she had no right to listen, but she did; she waited breathless, in an agony of expectation, for the next words.“I would not be jealous if I were you, Nancy,” said Maggie’s lazy, sweet voice. “The poor girl is as queer as her name, but it gives me a kind of aesthetic pleasure to be good to people.Youhave no cause to be jealous, sweet pet.”Priscilla raised one trembling hand, and noiselessly put out her candle. Her feet seemed rooted to the spot.Nancy murmured something, which Priscilla could not hear. Then there was the sound of one girl kissing another, and Maggie’s light laugh was heard again.“The unfortunate girl has fallen in love with you, there’s no doubt about that, Maggie,” said Nancy.“Well, my dear, she’ll get over that little fever presently. When I’m kind to them, they all have it. I believe I am gracious to them just because I like to see that grateful, affectionate expression in their eyes. The fact is, Nance, I have a perfectly crazy desire to excite love.”“But do you give love, Maggie? Do you ever give it back in return?”“Sometimes. I don’t know, I believe I am rather fond of you, for instance.”“Maggie, was Geoffrey Hammond at St. Hilda’s this afternoon?”“I can’t possibly say,” replied Maggie, in a cold voice. Then she added excitedly, “I don’t believe the door is shut! You are so careless, Nannie, so indifferent to the fact that theremaybe eavesdroppers about.”Priscilla crept back to her room. She had forgotten all about her purse; every other feeling was completely swallowed up in a burning, choking sense of anger.
The students at St. Benet’s were accustomed to unlimited licence in the matter of sitting up at night. At a certain hour the electric lights were put out, but each girl was well supplied with candles, and could sit up and pursue her studies into the small hours, if she willed.
It was late when Priscilla left Maggie Oliphant’s room on this first night, but, long as her journey had been, and tired as she undoubtedly felt, the events of the evening had excited her, and she did not care to go to bed. Her fire was now burning well, and her room was warm and cosy. She drew the bolt of her door, and, unlocking her trunk, began to unpack. She was a methodical girl, and well trained. Miss Rachel Peel had instilled order into Priscilla from her earliest days, and she now quickly disposed of her small but neat wardrobe. Her linen would just fit into the drawers of the bureau. Her two or three dresses and jackets were hung tidily away behind the curtain which formed her wardrobe.
Priscilla pushed her empty trunk against the wall, folded up the bits of string and paper which lay scattered about, and then, slowly undressing, she got into bed.
She undressed with a certain sense of luxuriousness and pleasure. Her room began to look charming to her now that her things were unpacked, and the first sharp pain of her home-sickness was greatly softened since she had fallen in love with Maggie Oliphant.
Priscilla had not often in the course of her life undressed by a fire, but then had she ever spent an evening like this one? All was fresh to her, new, exciting. Now she was really very tired, and the moment she laid her head on her pillow would doubtless be asleep.
She got into bed, and, putting out her candle, lay down. The firelight played on the pale blue walls, and lit up the bold design of the briar-roses, which ran round the frieze at the top of the room.
Priscilla wondered why she did not drop asleep at once. She felt vexed with herself when she discovered that each instant the chance of slumber was flying before her, that every moment her tired body became more restless and wide-awake. She could not help gazing at that scroll of briar-roses; she could not help thinking of the hand that had painted the flowers, of the girl whose presence had once made the room in which she now lay so charming.
Priscilla had not yet been twelve hours at St. Benet’s, and yet almost every student she had met had spoken of Annabel Lee—had spoken of her with interest, with regret. One girl had gone further than this; she had breathed her name with bitter sorrow.
Priscilla wished she had not been put into this room. She felt absolutely nervous; she had a sense of usurping someone else’s place, of turning somebody else out into the cold. She did not believe in ghosts, but she had an uncomfortable sensation, and it would not have greatly surprised her if Annabel had come gliding back in the night watches to put the finishing touches to those scrolls of wild flowers which ornamented the panels of the doors, and to the design of the briar-rose, which ran round the frieze of the room. Annabel might come in, and pursue this work in stealthy spirit fashion, and then glide up to her, and ask her to get out of this little white bed, and let the strange visitor, to whom it had once belonged, rest in it herself once more.
Annabel Lee! It was a queer name—a wild, bewitching sort of a name—the name of a girl in a song.
Priscilla knew many of Poe’s strange songs, and she found herself now murmuring some words which used to fascinate her long ago:—
“And the angels, not half so happy in heaven,Went envying her and me;Yes! that was the reason (as all men knowIn this kingdom by the sea)That the wind came out of the cloud by night,Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee!“But our love it was stronger by far than the loveOf those who were older than we,—Of many far wiser than we;And neither the angels in heaven above,Nor the demons down under the sea,Can ever dissever my soul from the soulOf the beautiful Annabel Lee.”
“And the angels, not half so happy in heaven,Went envying her and me;Yes! that was the reason (as all men knowIn this kingdom by the sea)That the wind came out of the cloud by night,Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee!“But our love it was stronger by far than the loveOf those who were older than we,—Of many far wiser than we;And neither the angels in heaven above,Nor the demons down under the sea,Can ever dissever my soul from the soulOf the beautiful Annabel Lee.”
Some ashes fell from the expiring fire; Priscilla jumped up in bed with a start. Her heart was beating fast. She thought of Maggie’s exquisite face. She remembered it as she had seen it that night when they were sitting by the fire, as she had seen it last, when it turned so white, and the eyes blazed at her in anger.
Priscilla stretched out her hand for a box of matches. She would light her candle, and, as there was no chance of her going to sleep, sit up, put her dressing-jacket on, and begin to write a long letter home to Aunt Raby and to her little sisters. Such methodical work would calm nerves not often so highly strung.
She rose, and fetching her neat little leather writing-case from where she had placed it on the top of her bureau, prepared to open it.
The little case was locked. Priscilla went over to her curtained wardrobe, pushed it aside, and felt in the pocket of the dress she had worn that day for her purse. It was not there. Within that purse the little key was safely hiding, but the purse itself was nowhere to be found.
Priscilla looked all round the room. In vain; the neat brown-leather purse, which held the key, some very precious memoranda of different sorts, and her small store of worldly wealth, was nowhere to be found.
She stood still for a moment in perplexity. All her nervous fears had now completely vanished; a real calamity and a grave one stared her in the face. Suppose her purse were gone? Suppose it had been stolen? The very small supply of money which that purse contained was most precious to Priscilla. It seemed to her that nothing could well be more terrible than for her now to have to apply to Aunt Raby for fresh funds. Aunt Raby had stinted herself dreadfully to get Priscilla’s modest little outfit together, and now—oh, she would rather starve than appeal to her again.
Suddenly as she stood in the middle of her room a memory came back to her. It was the recollection of a very trivial incident. She remembered something dropping on the floor as she sat by Maggie’s side at dinner. She had felt too nervous and miserable at the time to take any notice of the slight sound made by the fall, but now it returned vividly to her memory. She was sure that her purse must have dropped out of her pocket at that moment, and was convinced that it was now lying quietly under the table where she had sat.
Priscilla felt far too excited to wait until the morning to make herself sure on this point. No; happen what might, she would set her fears at rest now, and find her way somehow through the strange and sleeping house until she discovered her lost treasure.
Partly re-dressing, she took her candle in her hand, and softly unhasped her door. It was a well-oiled lock, and made no click or noise of any kind as she turned the handle. When she opened the door wide it did not creak. The long corridor outside had a stone floor, and was richly carpeted. No fear of treacherous, creaking boards here. Priscilla prepared to walk briskly down the length of the corridor, when she was arrested by seeing a light streaming out of Maggie Oliphant’s room.
The electric lights were all extinguished, and this light alone shone like a ray in the darkness.
Prissie stood still, with a gasp of dismay. She did not want Maggie to hear her now. She would have been distressed at Maggie being acquainted with her carelessness. She felt sure that a girl like Maggie Oliphant could never understand what a little purse, which only contained a sovereign or two, would mean to her.
On tiptoe, and shading the candle with her hand, she stole past the partly open door. A rich tapestry curtain hung at the other side, and Maggie doubtless thought the door was shut.
Priscilla had almost gone past the open door, when her steps were again arrested by the sound of voices. Someone said “Priscilla Peel,” and then someone else laughed.
Priscilla stood perfectly still. Of course she had no right to listen, but she did; she waited breathless, in an agony of expectation, for the next words.
“I would not be jealous if I were you, Nancy,” said Maggie’s lazy, sweet voice. “The poor girl is as queer as her name, but it gives me a kind of aesthetic pleasure to be good to people.Youhave no cause to be jealous, sweet pet.”
Priscilla raised one trembling hand, and noiselessly put out her candle. Her feet seemed rooted to the spot.
Nancy murmured something, which Priscilla could not hear. Then there was the sound of one girl kissing another, and Maggie’s light laugh was heard again.
“The unfortunate girl has fallen in love with you, there’s no doubt about that, Maggie,” said Nancy.
“Well, my dear, she’ll get over that little fever presently. When I’m kind to them, they all have it. I believe I am gracious to them just because I like to see that grateful, affectionate expression in their eyes. The fact is, Nance, I have a perfectly crazy desire to excite love.”
“But do you give love, Maggie? Do you ever give it back in return?”
“Sometimes. I don’t know, I believe I am rather fond of you, for instance.”
“Maggie, was Geoffrey Hammond at St. Hilda’s this afternoon?”
“I can’t possibly say,” replied Maggie, in a cold voice. Then she added excitedly, “I don’t believe the door is shut! You are so careless, Nannie, so indifferent to the fact that theremaybe eavesdroppers about.”
Priscilla crept back to her room. She had forgotten all about her purse; every other feeling was completely swallowed up in a burning, choking sense of anger.
Chapter Five.Why Priscilla Peel went to St. Benet’s.Priscilla had received a shock, and hers was not the sort of nature to take such a blow easily. She was a reserved girl, but her feelings were deep, her affections very strong. Priscilla had a rather commonplace past, but it was the sort of past to foster and deepen the peculiarities of her character. Her father had died when she was twelve, her mother when she was fourteen. They were north-country folk, and they possessed all the best characteristics of their class. They were rigidly upright people, they never went in debt; they considered luxuries bad for the soul, and the smaller refinements of life altogether unnecessary.Mr Peel managed to save a little money out of his earnings. He took year by year these savings to the nearest County Bank, and invested them to the best of his ability. The bank broke, and in one fell stroke he lost all the savings of a life. This affected his health, and he never held up his head or recovered his vigour of mind and body again.He died, and two years afterwards his wife followed him. Priscilla was then fourteen, and there were three little sisters several years younger. They were merry little children, strong, healthy, untouched by care. Priscilla, on the contrary, was grave, and looked much older than her years.On the night their mother was buried, Aunt Rachel Peel, their father’s sister, came from her home far away on the borders of Devonshire, and told the four desolate children that she was going to take them away to live on her little farm with her.Aunt Raby spoke in a very frank manner. She concealed nothing.“It’s only fair to tell you, Prissie,” she said, addressing the tall, gawky girl, who stood with her hands folded in front of her—“it’s only fair to tell you that hitherto I’ve just made two ends meet for one mouth alone, and how I’m to fill four extra ones the Lord knows, but I don’t. Still, I’m going to try, for it shall never be said that Andrew Peel’s children wanted bread while his sister, Rachel Peel, lived.”“We have none of us big appetites,” said Priscilla, after a long, solemn pause; “we can do with very little food—very little. The only one who ever isreallyhungry is Hattie.”Aunt Raby looked up at the pale face, for Prissie was taller than her aunt even then, and said in a shocked voice—“Good gracious, child! do you think I’d stint one of you? You ought all to be hearty, and I hope you will be. No, no, it isn’t that, Prissie, but there’ll be no luxuries, so don’t you expect them.”“I don’t want them,” answered Priscilla.The children all went to Devonshire, and Aunt Raby toiled, as perhaps no woman had ever toiled before, to put bread into their mouths. Katie had a fever, which made her pale and thin, and took away that look of robustness which had characterised the little Yorkshire maiden. Nobody thought about the children’s education, and they might have grown up without any were it not for Priscilla, who taught them what she knew herself. Nobody thought Priscilla clever; she had no brilliance about her in any way, but she had a great gift for acquiring knowledge. Wherever she went she picked up a fresh fact, or a fresh fancy, or a new idea, and these she turned over and over in her active, strong, young brain, until she assimilated them, and made them part of herself.Amongst the few things that had been saved from her early home there was a box of her father’s old books, and as these comprised several of the early poets and essayists, she might have gone farther and fared worse.One day the old clergyman who lived at a small vicarage near called to see Miss Peel. He discovered Priscilla deep over Carlyle’s “History of the French Revolution.” The young girl had become absorbed in the fascination of the wild and terrible tale. Some of the horror of it had got into her eyes as she raised them to return Mr Hayes’ courteous greeting. His attention was arrested by the look she gave him. He questioned her about her reading, and presently offered to help her. From this hour Priscilla made rapid progress. She was not taught in the ordinary fashion, but she was being really educated. Her life was full now; she knew nothing about the world, nothing about society. She had no ambitions, and she did not trouble herself to look very far ahead. The old classics which she studied from morning till night abundantly satisfied her really strong intellectual nature.Mr Hayes allowed her to talk with him, even to argue points with him. He always liked her to draw her own conclusions; he encouraged her really original ideas; he was proud of his pupil, and he grew fond of her. It was not Priscilla’s way to say a word about it, but she soon loved the old clergyman as if he were her father.Some time between her sixteenth and seventeenth birthday that awakening came which altered the whole course of her life. It was a summer’s day. Priscilla was seated in the old wainscotted parlour of the cottage, devouring a book lent to her by Mr Hayes on the origin of the Greek Drama, and occasionally bending to kiss little Katie, who sat curled up in her arms, when the two elder children rushed in with the information that Aunt Raby had suddenly lain flat down in the hayfield, and they thought she was asleep.Prissie tumbled her book in one direction, and Katie in the other. In a moment she was kneeling by Miss Peel’s side.“What is it, Aunt Raby?” she asked, tenderly. “Are you ill?”The tired woman opened her eyes slowly.“I think I fainted, dear love,” she said. “Perhaps it was the heat of the sun.”Priscilla managed to get her back into the house. She grew better presently, and seemed something like herself, but that evening the aunt and niece had a long talk, and the next day Prissie went up to see Mr Hayes.“I am interested,” he said, when he saw her enter the room, “to see how you have construed that passage in Cicero, Priscilla. You know I warned you of its difficulty.”“Oh, please, sir, don’t,” said Prissie, holding up her hand with an impatient movement, which she now and then found herself indulging in. “I don’t care if Cicero is at the bottom of the sea. I don’t want to speak about him, or think about him. His day is over, mine is—oh, sir, I beg your pardon.”“Granted, my dear child. Sit down, Prissie. I will forgive your profane words about Cicero, for I see you are excited. What is the matter?”“I want you to help me, Mr Hayes. Will you help me? You have always been my dear friend, my good friend.”“Of course I will help you. What is wrong? Speak to me fully.”“Aunt Raby fainted in the hayfield yesterday.”“Indeed? It was a warm day; I am truly concerned. Would she like to see me? Is she better to-day?”“She is quite well to-day—quite well for the time.”“My dear Priscilla, what a tragic face! Your Aunt Raby is not the first woman who has fainted, and got out of her faint again and been none the worse.”“That is just the point, Mr Hayes. Aunt Raby has got out of her faint, but sheisthe worse.”Mr Hayes looked hard into his pupil’s face. There was no beauty in it. The mouth was wide, the complexion dull, the features irregular. Even her eyes—and perhaps they were Prissie’s best point—were neither large nor dark; but an expression now filled those eyes and lingered round that mouth which made the old rector feel solemn.He took one of the girl’s thin unformed hands between his own.“My dear child,” he said, “something weighs on your mind. Tell your old friend—your almost father—all that is in your heart.”Thus begged to make a confidence, Priscilla did tell a commonplace, and yet tragic, story. Aunt Raby was affected with an incurable illness. It would not kill her soon; she might live for years, but every year she would grow a little weaker, and a little less capable of toil. As long as she lived the little farm belonged to her, but whenever she died it would pass to a distant cousin. Whenever Aunt Raby died, Priscilla and her three sisters would be penniless.“So I have come to you,” continued Prissie, “to say that I must take steps at once to enable me to earn money. I must support Hattie and Rose and Katie whenever Aunt Raby goes. I must earn money as soon as it is possible for a girl to do so, and I must stop dreaming and thinking of nothing but books, for perhaps books and I will have little to say to each other in future.”“That would be sad,” replied Mr Hayes, “for that would be taking a directly opposite direction to the path which Providence clearly intends you to walk in.”Priscilla raised her eyes, and looked earnestly at the old rector. Then, clasping her hands tightly together, she said with suppressed passion—“Why do you encourage me to be selfish, Mr Hayes?”“I will not,” he replied, answering her look; “I will listen patiently to all you have to say. How do you propose to earn bread for yourself and your sisters?”“I thought of dressmaking.”“Um! Did you—make—the gown you have on?”“Yes,” replied Priscilla, looking down at her ungainly homespun garment.The rector rose to his feet, and smiled in the most sweet and benevolent way.“I am no judge of such matters,” he said, “and I may be wrong. But my impression is that the style and cut of that dress would scarcely have a large demand in fashionable quarters.”“Oh, sir!” Prissie blushed all over. “You know I said I should have to learn.”“My dear child,” said Mr Hayes, firmly, “when it becomes a question of a woman earning her bread, let her turn to that path where promise lies. There is no promise in the fit of that gown, Prissie. But here—here there is much.”He touched her big forehead lightly with his hand.“You must not give up your books, my dear,” he said, “for, independently of the pleasure they afford, they will also give you bread-and-butter. Go home now, and let me think over matters. Come again to-morrow. I may have important things to say to you.”From this conversation came the results which, shortly after the completion of her eighteenth year, made Priscilla an inmate of St. Benet’s far-famed College for Women. Mr Hayes left no stone unturned to effect his object. He thought Priscilla could do brilliantly as a teacher, and he resolved that for this purpose she should have the advantages which a collegiate life alone could offer to her. He himself prepared her for her entrance examination, and he and Aunt Raby between them managed the necessary funds to give the girl a three-years’ life as a student in these halls of learning.Prissie knew very little about the money part of the scheme. She only guessed what had become of Aunt Raby’s watch and chain; and a spasm crossed her face when one day she happened to see that Aunt Raby’s poor little jewel case was empty. The jewels and the watch could certainly not fetch much, but they provided Prissie with a modest little outfit, and Mr Hayes had got a grant from a loan society, which further lightened expenses for all parties.Priscilla bade her sisters, her aunt, and the old rector good-bye, and started on her new life with courage.
Priscilla had received a shock, and hers was not the sort of nature to take such a blow easily. She was a reserved girl, but her feelings were deep, her affections very strong. Priscilla had a rather commonplace past, but it was the sort of past to foster and deepen the peculiarities of her character. Her father had died when she was twelve, her mother when she was fourteen. They were north-country folk, and they possessed all the best characteristics of their class. They were rigidly upright people, they never went in debt; they considered luxuries bad for the soul, and the smaller refinements of life altogether unnecessary.
Mr Peel managed to save a little money out of his earnings. He took year by year these savings to the nearest County Bank, and invested them to the best of his ability. The bank broke, and in one fell stroke he lost all the savings of a life. This affected his health, and he never held up his head or recovered his vigour of mind and body again.
He died, and two years afterwards his wife followed him. Priscilla was then fourteen, and there were three little sisters several years younger. They were merry little children, strong, healthy, untouched by care. Priscilla, on the contrary, was grave, and looked much older than her years.
On the night their mother was buried, Aunt Rachel Peel, their father’s sister, came from her home far away on the borders of Devonshire, and told the four desolate children that she was going to take them away to live on her little farm with her.
Aunt Raby spoke in a very frank manner. She concealed nothing.
“It’s only fair to tell you, Prissie,” she said, addressing the tall, gawky girl, who stood with her hands folded in front of her—“it’s only fair to tell you that hitherto I’ve just made two ends meet for one mouth alone, and how I’m to fill four extra ones the Lord knows, but I don’t. Still, I’m going to try, for it shall never be said that Andrew Peel’s children wanted bread while his sister, Rachel Peel, lived.”
“We have none of us big appetites,” said Priscilla, after a long, solemn pause; “we can do with very little food—very little. The only one who ever isreallyhungry is Hattie.”
Aunt Raby looked up at the pale face, for Prissie was taller than her aunt even then, and said in a shocked voice—
“Good gracious, child! do you think I’d stint one of you? You ought all to be hearty, and I hope you will be. No, no, it isn’t that, Prissie, but there’ll be no luxuries, so don’t you expect them.”
“I don’t want them,” answered Priscilla.
The children all went to Devonshire, and Aunt Raby toiled, as perhaps no woman had ever toiled before, to put bread into their mouths. Katie had a fever, which made her pale and thin, and took away that look of robustness which had characterised the little Yorkshire maiden. Nobody thought about the children’s education, and they might have grown up without any were it not for Priscilla, who taught them what she knew herself. Nobody thought Priscilla clever; she had no brilliance about her in any way, but she had a great gift for acquiring knowledge. Wherever she went she picked up a fresh fact, or a fresh fancy, or a new idea, and these she turned over and over in her active, strong, young brain, until she assimilated them, and made them part of herself.
Amongst the few things that had been saved from her early home there was a box of her father’s old books, and as these comprised several of the early poets and essayists, she might have gone farther and fared worse.
One day the old clergyman who lived at a small vicarage near called to see Miss Peel. He discovered Priscilla deep over Carlyle’s “History of the French Revolution.” The young girl had become absorbed in the fascination of the wild and terrible tale. Some of the horror of it had got into her eyes as she raised them to return Mr Hayes’ courteous greeting. His attention was arrested by the look she gave him. He questioned her about her reading, and presently offered to help her. From this hour Priscilla made rapid progress. She was not taught in the ordinary fashion, but she was being really educated. Her life was full now; she knew nothing about the world, nothing about society. She had no ambitions, and she did not trouble herself to look very far ahead. The old classics which she studied from morning till night abundantly satisfied her really strong intellectual nature.
Mr Hayes allowed her to talk with him, even to argue points with him. He always liked her to draw her own conclusions; he encouraged her really original ideas; he was proud of his pupil, and he grew fond of her. It was not Priscilla’s way to say a word about it, but she soon loved the old clergyman as if he were her father.
Some time between her sixteenth and seventeenth birthday that awakening came which altered the whole course of her life. It was a summer’s day. Priscilla was seated in the old wainscotted parlour of the cottage, devouring a book lent to her by Mr Hayes on the origin of the Greek Drama, and occasionally bending to kiss little Katie, who sat curled up in her arms, when the two elder children rushed in with the information that Aunt Raby had suddenly lain flat down in the hayfield, and they thought she was asleep.
Prissie tumbled her book in one direction, and Katie in the other. In a moment she was kneeling by Miss Peel’s side.
“What is it, Aunt Raby?” she asked, tenderly. “Are you ill?”
The tired woman opened her eyes slowly.
“I think I fainted, dear love,” she said. “Perhaps it was the heat of the sun.”
Priscilla managed to get her back into the house. She grew better presently, and seemed something like herself, but that evening the aunt and niece had a long talk, and the next day Prissie went up to see Mr Hayes.
“I am interested,” he said, when he saw her enter the room, “to see how you have construed that passage in Cicero, Priscilla. You know I warned you of its difficulty.”
“Oh, please, sir, don’t,” said Prissie, holding up her hand with an impatient movement, which she now and then found herself indulging in. “I don’t care if Cicero is at the bottom of the sea. I don’t want to speak about him, or think about him. His day is over, mine is—oh, sir, I beg your pardon.”
“Granted, my dear child. Sit down, Prissie. I will forgive your profane words about Cicero, for I see you are excited. What is the matter?”
“I want you to help me, Mr Hayes. Will you help me? You have always been my dear friend, my good friend.”
“Of course I will help you. What is wrong? Speak to me fully.”
“Aunt Raby fainted in the hayfield yesterday.”
“Indeed? It was a warm day; I am truly concerned. Would she like to see me? Is she better to-day?”
“She is quite well to-day—quite well for the time.”
“My dear Priscilla, what a tragic face! Your Aunt Raby is not the first woman who has fainted, and got out of her faint again and been none the worse.”
“That is just the point, Mr Hayes. Aunt Raby has got out of her faint, but sheisthe worse.”
Mr Hayes looked hard into his pupil’s face. There was no beauty in it. The mouth was wide, the complexion dull, the features irregular. Even her eyes—and perhaps they were Prissie’s best point—were neither large nor dark; but an expression now filled those eyes and lingered round that mouth which made the old rector feel solemn.
He took one of the girl’s thin unformed hands between his own.
“My dear child,” he said, “something weighs on your mind. Tell your old friend—your almost father—all that is in your heart.”
Thus begged to make a confidence, Priscilla did tell a commonplace, and yet tragic, story. Aunt Raby was affected with an incurable illness. It would not kill her soon; she might live for years, but every year she would grow a little weaker, and a little less capable of toil. As long as she lived the little farm belonged to her, but whenever she died it would pass to a distant cousin. Whenever Aunt Raby died, Priscilla and her three sisters would be penniless.
“So I have come to you,” continued Prissie, “to say that I must take steps at once to enable me to earn money. I must support Hattie and Rose and Katie whenever Aunt Raby goes. I must earn money as soon as it is possible for a girl to do so, and I must stop dreaming and thinking of nothing but books, for perhaps books and I will have little to say to each other in future.”
“That would be sad,” replied Mr Hayes, “for that would be taking a directly opposite direction to the path which Providence clearly intends you to walk in.”
Priscilla raised her eyes, and looked earnestly at the old rector. Then, clasping her hands tightly together, she said with suppressed passion—
“Why do you encourage me to be selfish, Mr Hayes?”
“I will not,” he replied, answering her look; “I will listen patiently to all you have to say. How do you propose to earn bread for yourself and your sisters?”
“I thought of dressmaking.”
“Um! Did you—make—the gown you have on?”
“Yes,” replied Priscilla, looking down at her ungainly homespun garment.
The rector rose to his feet, and smiled in the most sweet and benevolent way.
“I am no judge of such matters,” he said, “and I may be wrong. But my impression is that the style and cut of that dress would scarcely have a large demand in fashionable quarters.”
“Oh, sir!” Prissie blushed all over. “You know I said I should have to learn.”
“My dear child,” said Mr Hayes, firmly, “when it becomes a question of a woman earning her bread, let her turn to that path where promise lies. There is no promise in the fit of that gown, Prissie. But here—here there is much.”
He touched her big forehead lightly with his hand.
“You must not give up your books, my dear,” he said, “for, independently of the pleasure they afford, they will also give you bread-and-butter. Go home now, and let me think over matters. Come again to-morrow. I may have important things to say to you.”
From this conversation came the results which, shortly after the completion of her eighteenth year, made Priscilla an inmate of St. Benet’s far-famed College for Women. Mr Hayes left no stone unturned to effect his object. He thought Priscilla could do brilliantly as a teacher, and he resolved that for this purpose she should have the advantages which a collegiate life alone could offer to her. He himself prepared her for her entrance examination, and he and Aunt Raby between them managed the necessary funds to give the girl a three-years’ life as a student in these halls of learning.
Prissie knew very little about the money part of the scheme. She only guessed what had become of Aunt Raby’s watch and chain; and a spasm crossed her face when one day she happened to see that Aunt Raby’s poor little jewel case was empty. The jewels and the watch could certainly not fetch much, but they provided Prissie with a modest little outfit, and Mr Hayes had got a grant from a loan society, which further lightened expenses for all parties.
Priscilla bade her sisters, her aunt, and the old rector good-bye, and started on her new life with courage.
Chapter Six.College Life.The routine of life at St. Benet’s was something as follows:—The dressing-bell was rung at seven, and all the students were expected to meet in the chapel for prayers at eight. Nothing was said if they did not appear; no reproofs were uttered, and no inquiries made; but the good-fellowship between the students and the dons was so apparent in the three Halls, that known wishes were always regarded, and, as a rule, there were few absentees.The girls went to chapel in their white-straw sailor-hats, simply trimmed with a broad band of ribbon of the college colours, green with a narrow stripe of gold. Breakfast immediately followed chapel; tea and coffee and different cold meats were placed on the side-tables, and the girls helped themselves to what they pleased.The great event at breakfast was the post. Each student, when she entered the breakfast-hall, would make an eager rush to the side-table where the letters were neatly placed. During breakfast these were read and chatted over. The whole meal was most informal, and seldom lasted more than a quarter of an hour.After breakfast the notice-board in the large entrance-hall was visited and eagerly scanned, for it contained a detailed account of the hours for the different lectures, and the names of the lecturers who would instruct the students during the day. By the side of the large official notice-board hung another, which was read with quite as deep interest. This contained particulars of the meetings of the different clubs and societies for pleasure or profit got up by the girls themselves.On the morning after her arrival, Priscilla, with the other students, read the contents of these two boards, and then, in the company of a Fresher, nearly as shy as herself, she wandered about the lovely grounds which surrounded Heath Hall until nine o’clock, when lectures began.Lectures continued without interruption until lunch-time, a meal which was taken very much when the girls pleased. The time allowed for this light midday refreshment was from half-past twelve to two. The afternoons were mostly given up to games and gymnastics, although occasionally there were more lectures, and the more studious of the girls spent a considerable part of the time studying in their own rooms.Tea was the convivial meal of the day; to this the girls invited outside friends and acquaintances, and, as a rule, they always took it in their own rooms.Dinner was at half-past six, and from half-past seven to half-past nine was usually the time when the different clubs and societies met.There was a regularity and yet a freedom about the life; invisible bounds were prescribed, beyond which no right-minded or conscientious girl cared to venture, but the rules were really very few. Students might visit their friends in Kingsdene, and receive them at the college. They might entertain them at luncheon or dinner, or at tea in their own rooms, at a fixed charge; and provided the friends left at a certain hour, and the girls themselves asked for leave of absence when they wished to remain out, and mentioned the place to which they proposed to go, no questions were asked, and no objections offered.They were expected to return to the college not later than eleven at night, and one invitation to go out in the week was, as a rule, the most they ever accepted.Into this life Priscilla came, fresh from the Devonshire farm and from all the pursuits and interests which had hitherto formed her world. She had made a very firm niche for herself in Aunt Raby’s old cottage, and the dislodgment therefrom caused her for the time such mental disquiet and so many nervous and queer sensations that her pain was often acute and her sense of awkwardness considerable.Priscilla’s best in her early life always seemed but a poor affair, and she certainly neither looked nor was at her best at first here. After a few days, however, she fitted into her new grooves, took up the line of study which she intended to pursue, and was quickly absorbed in all the fascinations which it offered to a nature like hers.Her purse was restored to her on the morning after her arrival, and neither Maggie Oliphant nor Nancy Banister ever guessed that she had overheard some words of theirs on the night of her arrival, and that these had put bitterness into her heart and nearly destroyed her faith in her fellow-students. Both Maggie and Nance made several overtures of kindness to Prissie, but the cold manner which was more or less habitual to her never thawed, and, after a time, they left her alone. There is no saying what might have happened to Prissie had she never overheard this conversation. As it was, however, after the first shock it gave her courage.She said to herself—“I should think very little of myself if I did not despise a girl like Miss Oliphant. Is it likely I should care to imitate one whom I despise? There was a brief, dreadful hour when I absolutely pined to have pretty things in my room as she has in hers; now I can do without them. My room shall remain bare and unadorned. In this state it will at least look unique.”It did. The other students who lived in the same corridor came to visit Priscilla in the free and easy manner which characterised them, and made remarks the reverse of flattering. Whenwasshe going to put her pictures up? Miss Day would be delighted to help her whenever she chose to do it. When did she intend to go down to Kingsdene to order her easy-chairs and little Japanese tables, and rugs, and the other small but necessary articles which would be required to make her room habitable?For several days Priscilla turned these inquiries aside. She blushed, stammered, looked awkward, and spoke of something else. At last, however, she summoned up courage, and, once for all, delivered herself from her tormentors. She did that remarkably brave thing which sometimes very nervous people can brace themselves to do.It was evening, and Miss Day, Miss Marsh, and Nancy Banister had all come in for a few minutes to see Priscilla on their way to their own rooms.“Do come and cocoa with me to-night, Miss Peel,” said Miss Day. “You’re so dreadfully unsociable, not a bit like an ordinary St. Benet’s girl. If you go on in this fashion you’ll be moped to death before your first term is over.”“I am accustomed to a very quiet life,” responded Priscilla, “and I want to work; I have come here to work.”“Dear, dear! anyone would suppose you were going in for a tripos. If this were your last term I could understand it—but your first!”It was Miss Marsh who said these words. She was a bright-eyed, merry-looking girl, the reverse of over-studious herself.“Oh, come along, dear: I’ll give you such a delicious cup of cocoa,” said Miss Day.She crossed the room, and tried to link her hand affectionately in Prissie’s arm. Miss Peel drew back a step.“Thank you,” she said, “but I—I—cannot come.”“I must say you have a blunt way of refusing,” said Miss Day. She felt inclined to be offended, but Nancy Banister, who was standing by, and had not hitherto spoken, bestowed a quick glance of approval on Priscilla, and then said something soothing to Miss Day.“May I cocoa with you instead, Annie?” she said. “I am afraid no one can accuse me of killing myself with work, but we all respect earnest workers—we must. It is for them St. Benet’s is really meant. It was endowed for them, and built for them, and we poor drones must not throw disparaging remarks on the busy bees.”“Oh, nonsense!” said Miss Marsh; “St. Benet’s was made for sociability as well as study, and I have no patience with the students who don’t try to combine the two. By the way,” she added, turning round, and speaking in a rather impertinent voice to Priscilla, “I sent you a message to say I was going down to Kingsdene this afternoon, and would be happy to take you with me if you would care to visit Spilman’s.”“Thank you,” said Priscilla, “I got your note just too late to answer it. I was going to speak to you about it,” she added.“Then you would have come?”Priscilla’s face grew very red.“No, I should not have come.”It was Miss Marsh’s turn to get red.“Come! Annie,” she exclaimed, turning to Miss Day, “we had better waste no more time here. Miss Banister, we’ll see you presently, won’t we? Good-night, Miss Peel. Perhaps you don’t mind my saying something very frank?”“I do,” said Priscilla, “but that won’t prevent your saying it, will it?”“I don’t think it will. After you have been at St. Benet’s a little longer you will know that we not only appreciate cleverness and studious ways, but also obliging and sociable and friendly manners; and—and—pretty rooms—rooms with easy-chairs, and comfortable lounges, and the thousand and one things which give one a feeling of home. Take my advice, Miss Peel, there’s no use fighting against the tide. You’ll have to do as others do in the long run, and you may as well do it at once. That is my plain opinion, and I should not have given it to you, if I had not thought you needed it. Good-night.”“No, stop a minute,” said Priscilla. Every scrap of colour had left her face, every trace of nervousness her manner. She walked before the two girls to the door, and closed it. “Please stay just for a minute longer, Miss Day and Miss Marsh, and you too, Miss Banister, if you will.”She went across the room again, and, opening the top drawer of her bureau, took out her purse. Out of the purse she took a key. The key fitted a small padlock, and the padlock belonged to her trunk. She unlocked her empty trunk and opened it.“There,” she said, turning to the girls—“there,” she continued, “you will be good enough to notice that there are no photographs concealed in this trunk, no pictures, no prints.” She lifted the tray. “Empty, you see,” she added, pointing with her hand to the lower portion of the trunk—“nothing here to make my room pretty, and cosy, and home-like.” Then she shut the trunk again and locked it, and going up to where the three girls stood, gazing at her in bewilderment and some alarm, she unfastened her purse, and turned all its contents into the palm of her hand.“Look, Miss Marsh,” she said, turning to the girl who had spoken last. “You may count what is here. One sovereign, one half-sovereign, two or three shillings, some pence. Would this money go far at Spilman’s, do you think?”Priscilla put it all slowly back again into her purse. Her face was still absolutely colourless. She laid the purse on the top of her bureau.“I do not suppose,” she said, in a low, sad voice, “that I am the sort of girl who often comes to a place of this sort. I am poor, and I have got to work hard, and I have no time for pleasure. Nevertheless,” she added—and now a great wave of colour swept over her face, and her eyes were lit up, and she had a sensation of feeling quite glad, and strong, and happy—“I am not going away because I am poor, and I am not going to mind what anyone thinks of me as long as I do right. My room must stay empty and bare, because I have no money to make it full and beautiful. And do you think that I would ask those—those who sent me here—to add one feather’s weight to their cares and expenses, to give me money to buy beautiful things because I am afraid of you? No, I should beawfullyafraid to do that; but I am not afraid of you.”Priscilla opened the drawer of her bureau and put her little light purse back again in its hiding-place.“Good-night, Miss Peel,” said Miss Day, in a thin, small kind of voice.“Good-night, Miss Peel,” said Miss Marsh. The girls went gently out of the room. They closed the door behind them, without making any noise. Nancy Banister remained behind. She came up to Priscilla, and kissed her.“You are brave,” she said. “I admire you. I—I—am proud of you. I am glad to know that a girl like you has come to live here.”“Don’t—don’t,” said poor Prissie. Her little burst of courage had deserted her. She covered her face with her trembling hands. She did not want Nancy Banister to see that her eyes were full of tears.
The routine of life at St. Benet’s was something as follows:—
The dressing-bell was rung at seven, and all the students were expected to meet in the chapel for prayers at eight. Nothing was said if they did not appear; no reproofs were uttered, and no inquiries made; but the good-fellowship between the students and the dons was so apparent in the three Halls, that known wishes were always regarded, and, as a rule, there were few absentees.
The girls went to chapel in their white-straw sailor-hats, simply trimmed with a broad band of ribbon of the college colours, green with a narrow stripe of gold. Breakfast immediately followed chapel; tea and coffee and different cold meats were placed on the side-tables, and the girls helped themselves to what they pleased.
The great event at breakfast was the post. Each student, when she entered the breakfast-hall, would make an eager rush to the side-table where the letters were neatly placed. During breakfast these were read and chatted over. The whole meal was most informal, and seldom lasted more than a quarter of an hour.
After breakfast the notice-board in the large entrance-hall was visited and eagerly scanned, for it contained a detailed account of the hours for the different lectures, and the names of the lecturers who would instruct the students during the day. By the side of the large official notice-board hung another, which was read with quite as deep interest. This contained particulars of the meetings of the different clubs and societies for pleasure or profit got up by the girls themselves.
On the morning after her arrival, Priscilla, with the other students, read the contents of these two boards, and then, in the company of a Fresher, nearly as shy as herself, she wandered about the lovely grounds which surrounded Heath Hall until nine o’clock, when lectures began.
Lectures continued without interruption until lunch-time, a meal which was taken very much when the girls pleased. The time allowed for this light midday refreshment was from half-past twelve to two. The afternoons were mostly given up to games and gymnastics, although occasionally there were more lectures, and the more studious of the girls spent a considerable part of the time studying in their own rooms.
Tea was the convivial meal of the day; to this the girls invited outside friends and acquaintances, and, as a rule, they always took it in their own rooms.
Dinner was at half-past six, and from half-past seven to half-past nine was usually the time when the different clubs and societies met.
There was a regularity and yet a freedom about the life; invisible bounds were prescribed, beyond which no right-minded or conscientious girl cared to venture, but the rules were really very few. Students might visit their friends in Kingsdene, and receive them at the college. They might entertain them at luncheon or dinner, or at tea in their own rooms, at a fixed charge; and provided the friends left at a certain hour, and the girls themselves asked for leave of absence when they wished to remain out, and mentioned the place to which they proposed to go, no questions were asked, and no objections offered.
They were expected to return to the college not later than eleven at night, and one invitation to go out in the week was, as a rule, the most they ever accepted.
Into this life Priscilla came, fresh from the Devonshire farm and from all the pursuits and interests which had hitherto formed her world. She had made a very firm niche for herself in Aunt Raby’s old cottage, and the dislodgment therefrom caused her for the time such mental disquiet and so many nervous and queer sensations that her pain was often acute and her sense of awkwardness considerable.
Priscilla’s best in her early life always seemed but a poor affair, and she certainly neither looked nor was at her best at first here. After a few days, however, she fitted into her new grooves, took up the line of study which she intended to pursue, and was quickly absorbed in all the fascinations which it offered to a nature like hers.
Her purse was restored to her on the morning after her arrival, and neither Maggie Oliphant nor Nancy Banister ever guessed that she had overheard some words of theirs on the night of her arrival, and that these had put bitterness into her heart and nearly destroyed her faith in her fellow-students. Both Maggie and Nance made several overtures of kindness to Prissie, but the cold manner which was more or less habitual to her never thawed, and, after a time, they left her alone. There is no saying what might have happened to Prissie had she never overheard this conversation. As it was, however, after the first shock it gave her courage.
She said to herself—
“I should think very little of myself if I did not despise a girl like Miss Oliphant. Is it likely I should care to imitate one whom I despise? There was a brief, dreadful hour when I absolutely pined to have pretty things in my room as she has in hers; now I can do without them. My room shall remain bare and unadorned. In this state it will at least look unique.”
It did. The other students who lived in the same corridor came to visit Priscilla in the free and easy manner which characterised them, and made remarks the reverse of flattering. Whenwasshe going to put her pictures up? Miss Day would be delighted to help her whenever she chose to do it. When did she intend to go down to Kingsdene to order her easy-chairs and little Japanese tables, and rugs, and the other small but necessary articles which would be required to make her room habitable?
For several days Priscilla turned these inquiries aside. She blushed, stammered, looked awkward, and spoke of something else. At last, however, she summoned up courage, and, once for all, delivered herself from her tormentors. She did that remarkably brave thing which sometimes very nervous people can brace themselves to do.
It was evening, and Miss Day, Miss Marsh, and Nancy Banister had all come in for a few minutes to see Priscilla on their way to their own rooms.
“Do come and cocoa with me to-night, Miss Peel,” said Miss Day. “You’re so dreadfully unsociable, not a bit like an ordinary St. Benet’s girl. If you go on in this fashion you’ll be moped to death before your first term is over.”
“I am accustomed to a very quiet life,” responded Priscilla, “and I want to work; I have come here to work.”
“Dear, dear! anyone would suppose you were going in for a tripos. If this were your last term I could understand it—but your first!”
It was Miss Marsh who said these words. She was a bright-eyed, merry-looking girl, the reverse of over-studious herself.
“Oh, come along, dear: I’ll give you such a delicious cup of cocoa,” said Miss Day.
She crossed the room, and tried to link her hand affectionately in Prissie’s arm. Miss Peel drew back a step.
“Thank you,” she said, “but I—I—cannot come.”
“I must say you have a blunt way of refusing,” said Miss Day. She felt inclined to be offended, but Nancy Banister, who was standing by, and had not hitherto spoken, bestowed a quick glance of approval on Priscilla, and then said something soothing to Miss Day.
“May I cocoa with you instead, Annie?” she said. “I am afraid no one can accuse me of killing myself with work, but we all respect earnest workers—we must. It is for them St. Benet’s is really meant. It was endowed for them, and built for them, and we poor drones must not throw disparaging remarks on the busy bees.”
“Oh, nonsense!” said Miss Marsh; “St. Benet’s was made for sociability as well as study, and I have no patience with the students who don’t try to combine the two. By the way,” she added, turning round, and speaking in a rather impertinent voice to Priscilla, “I sent you a message to say I was going down to Kingsdene this afternoon, and would be happy to take you with me if you would care to visit Spilman’s.”
“Thank you,” said Priscilla, “I got your note just too late to answer it. I was going to speak to you about it,” she added.
“Then you would have come?”
Priscilla’s face grew very red.
“No, I should not have come.”
It was Miss Marsh’s turn to get red.
“Come! Annie,” she exclaimed, turning to Miss Day, “we had better waste no more time here. Miss Banister, we’ll see you presently, won’t we? Good-night, Miss Peel. Perhaps you don’t mind my saying something very frank?”
“I do,” said Priscilla, “but that won’t prevent your saying it, will it?”
“I don’t think it will. After you have been at St. Benet’s a little longer you will know that we not only appreciate cleverness and studious ways, but also obliging and sociable and friendly manners; and—and—pretty rooms—rooms with easy-chairs, and comfortable lounges, and the thousand and one things which give one a feeling of home. Take my advice, Miss Peel, there’s no use fighting against the tide. You’ll have to do as others do in the long run, and you may as well do it at once. That is my plain opinion, and I should not have given it to you, if I had not thought you needed it. Good-night.”
“No, stop a minute,” said Priscilla. Every scrap of colour had left her face, every trace of nervousness her manner. She walked before the two girls to the door, and closed it. “Please stay just for a minute longer, Miss Day and Miss Marsh, and you too, Miss Banister, if you will.”
She went across the room again, and, opening the top drawer of her bureau, took out her purse. Out of the purse she took a key. The key fitted a small padlock, and the padlock belonged to her trunk. She unlocked her empty trunk and opened it.
“There,” she said, turning to the girls—“there,” she continued, “you will be good enough to notice that there are no photographs concealed in this trunk, no pictures, no prints.” She lifted the tray. “Empty, you see,” she added, pointing with her hand to the lower portion of the trunk—“nothing here to make my room pretty, and cosy, and home-like.” Then she shut the trunk again and locked it, and going up to where the three girls stood, gazing at her in bewilderment and some alarm, she unfastened her purse, and turned all its contents into the palm of her hand.
“Look, Miss Marsh,” she said, turning to the girl who had spoken last. “You may count what is here. One sovereign, one half-sovereign, two or three shillings, some pence. Would this money go far at Spilman’s, do you think?”
Priscilla put it all slowly back again into her purse. Her face was still absolutely colourless. She laid the purse on the top of her bureau.
“I do not suppose,” she said, in a low, sad voice, “that I am the sort of girl who often comes to a place of this sort. I am poor, and I have got to work hard, and I have no time for pleasure. Nevertheless,” she added—and now a great wave of colour swept over her face, and her eyes were lit up, and she had a sensation of feeling quite glad, and strong, and happy—“I am not going away because I am poor, and I am not going to mind what anyone thinks of me as long as I do right. My room must stay empty and bare, because I have no money to make it full and beautiful. And do you think that I would ask those—those who sent me here—to add one feather’s weight to their cares and expenses, to give me money to buy beautiful things because I am afraid of you? No, I should beawfullyafraid to do that; but I am not afraid of you.”
Priscilla opened the drawer of her bureau and put her little light purse back again in its hiding-place.
“Good-night, Miss Peel,” said Miss Day, in a thin, small kind of voice.
“Good-night, Miss Peel,” said Miss Marsh. The girls went gently out of the room. They closed the door behind them, without making any noise. Nancy Banister remained behind. She came up to Priscilla, and kissed her.
“You are brave,” she said. “I admire you. I—I—am proud of you. I am glad to know that a girl like you has come to live here.”
“Don’t—don’t,” said poor Prissie. Her little burst of courage had deserted her. She covered her face with her trembling hands. She did not want Nancy Banister to see that her eyes were full of tears.
Chapter Seven.In Miss Oliphant’s Room.“My dear,” said Nancy Banister that same evening—“my dear and beloved Maggie, we have both been guilty of a huge mistake.”“What is that?” asked Miss Oliphant. She was leaning back in a deep easy-chair, and Nancy, who did not care for luxurious seats, had perched herself on a little stool at her feet. Nancy was a small, nervous-looking person; she had a zealous face, and eager, almost too active movements. Nancy was the soul of bustling good-nature, of brightness and kindness. She often said that Maggie Oliphant’s laziness rested her.“What is it?” said Maggie, again. “How are we in the wrong, Nance?”She lifted her dimpled hand as she spoke, and contemplated it with a slow, satisfied sort of smile.“We have made a mistake about Miss Peel, that is all; she is a very noble girl.”“Oh, my dear Nance! Poor little Puritan Prissie! What next?”“It is all very fine to call her names,” replied Nancy—here she sprang to her feet—“butIcouldn’t do what she did. Do you know that she absolutely and completely turned the tables on that vulgar Annie Day and that pushing, silly little Lucy Marsh. I never saw any two look smaller or poorer than those two when they skedaddled out of her room. Yes, that’s the word—they skedaddled to the door, both of them, looking as limp as a cotton dress when it has been worn for a week, and one almost treading on the other’s heels; and I do not think Prissie will be worried by them any more.”“Really, Nancy, you look quite pretty when you are excited! Now, what did this wonderful Miss Peel do? Did she box the ears of those two detestable girls? If so, she has my hearty congratulations.”“More than that, Maggie—that poor, little, meek, awkward, slim creature absolutely demolished them. Oh! she did it in such a fine, simple, unworldly sort of way. I only wish you had seen her! They were twitting her about not going in for all the fun here, and, above everything, for keeping her room so bare and unattractive. You know she has been a fortnight here to-day, and she has not got an extra thing—not one. There isn’t a room in the Hall like hers—it’s so bare and unhomelike. What’s the matter, Maggie?”“You needn’t go on, Nancy: if it’s about the room, I don’t want to hear it. You know I can’t—I can’t bear it.”Maggie’s lips were trembling, her face was white, she shaded her eyes with her hand.“Oh, my darling, I am so sorry. I forgot—I really did! There, you must try and think it was any room. What she did was all the same. Well, those girls had been twitting her. I expect she’s had a nice fortnight of it! She turned very white, and at last her blood was up, and she just gave it to them. She opened her little trunk. I really could have cried. It was such a poor, pathetic sort of receptacle to be capable of holding all one’s worldly goods, and she showed it to them—empty! ‘You see,’ she said, ‘that I have no pictures nor ornaments here!’ Then she turned the contents of her purse into her hand. I think, Maggie, she had about thirty shillings in the world, and she asked Lucy Marsh to count her money, and inquired how many things she thought it would purchase at Spilman’s. Then, Maggie, Priscilla turned on them. Oh, she did not look plain, then, nor awkward either. Her eyes had such a splendid, good, brave sort of light in them. And she said she had come here to work, and she meant to work, and her room must stay bare, for she had no money to make it anything else. ‘But,’ she said, ‘I am not afraid of you, but Iamafraid of hurting those’—whoever ‘those’ are—‘those’—oh, with such a ring on the word—‘who have sent me here!’“After that the two girls skedaddled; they had had enough of her, and I expect, Maggie, your little Puritan Prissie will be left in peace in the future.”“Don’t call her my little Puritan,” said Maggie. “I have nothing to say to her.”Maggie was leaning back again in her chair now; her face was still pale, and her soft eyes looked troubled.“I wish you wouldn’t tell me heroic stories, Nancy,” she remarked, after a pause. “They make me feel so uncomfortable. If Priscilla Peel is going to be turned into a sort of heroine, she’ll be much more unbearable than in her former character.”“Oh, Maggie, I wish you wouldn’t talk in that reckless way, nor pretend that you hate goodness. You know you adore it—you know you do! You know you are far and away the most lovable and bewitching, and the—the very best girl at St. Benet’s.”“No, dear little Nance, you are quite mistaken. Perhaps I’m bewitching—I suppose to a certain extent I am, for people always tell me so—but I’mnotlovable, and I’mnotgood. There, my dear, do let us turn from that uninteresting person—Maggie Oliphant. And so, Nancy, you are going to worship Priscilla Peel in future?”“Oh, dear no! that’s not my way. But I’m going to respect her very much. I think we have both rather shunned her lately, and Ididfeel sure at first that you meant to be very kind to her, Maggie.”Miss Oliphant yawned. It was her way to get over emotion very quickly. A moment before her face had been all eloquent with feeling; now its expression was distinctly bored, and her lazy eyes were not even open to their full extent.“Perhaps I found her stupid,” she said, “and so for that reason dropped her. Perhaps I would have continued to be kind if she had reciprocated attentions, but she did not. I am glad now, very glad, that we are unlikely to be friends, for, after what you have just told me, I should probably find her insupportable. Are you going, Nancy?”“Yes, I promised to have cocoa with Annie Day. I had almost forgotten. Good-night, Maggie.”Nancy shut the door softly behind her, and Maggie closed her eyes for a moment with a sigh of relief.“It’s nice to be alone,” she said, softly, under her breath, “it’s nice, and yet it isn’t nice. Nancy irritated me dreadfully this evening. I don’t like stories about good people. I don’t wish to think about good people. I am determined that I will not allow my thoughts to dwell on that unpleasant Priscilla Peel, and her pathetic poverty, and her burst of heroics. It is too trying to hear footsteps in that room. No, I will not think of that room, nor of its inmate. Now, if I could only go to sleep!”Maggie curled herself up in her luxurious chair, arranged a soft pillow under her head, and shut her eyes. In this attitude she made a charming picture: her thick, black lashes lay heavily on her pale cheeks; her red lips were slightly parted; her breathing came quietly. By-and-by repose took the place of tension—her face looked as if it were cut out of marble. The excitement and unrest, which her words had betrayed, vanished utterly; her features were beautiful, but almost expressionless.This lasted for a short time, perhaps ten minutes; then a trivial circumstance, the falling of a coal in the grate, disturbed the light slumber of the sleeper. Maggie stirred restlessly, and turned her head. She was not awake, but she was dreaming. A faint rose tint visited each check, and she clenched one hand, then moved it, and laid it over the other. Presently tears stoic from under the black eyelashes, and rolled down her cheeks. She opened her eyes wide; she was awake again; unutterable regret, remorse, which might never be quieted, filled her face.Maggie rose from her chair, and, going across the room, sat down at her bureau. She turned a shaded lamp, so that the light might fall upon the pages of a book she was studying, and, pushing her hands through her thick hair, she began to read a passage from the splendidPrometheus Vinctusof Aeschylus—“O divine ether, O swift-winged winds!”She muttered the opening lines to herself, then turning the page began to translate from the Greek with great ease and fluency:“O divine ether, and swift-winged winds,O flowing rivers, and ocean with countless-dimpling smile,Earth, mother of all, and the all-seeing circle of the sun,to you I call;Behold me, and the things that I; a god, suffer at the hands of gods.Behold the wrongs with which I am worn away, and which I shall sufferthrough endless time.Such is the shameful bondage which the new ruler of the Blessed Ones hasinvented for me.Alas! Alas! I bewail my present and future misery—”Anyone who had seen Maggie in her deep and expressionless sleep but a few minutes before would have watched her now with a sensation of surprise. This queer girl was showing another phase of her complex nature. Her face was no longer lacking in expression, no longer stricken with sorrow, nor harrowed with unavailing regret. A fine fire filled her eyes; her brow, as she pushed back her hair, showed its rather massive proportions. Now, intellect and the triumphant delight of overcoming a mental difficulty reigned supreme in her face. She read on without interruption for nearly an hour. At the end of that time her cheeks were burning like two glowing crimson roses.A knock came at her door; she started and turned round petulantly.“It’s just my luck,” muttered Maggie. “I’d have got the sense of that whole magnificent passage in another hour. It was beginning to fill me: I was getting satisfied—now it’s all over! I’d have had a good night if that knock hadn’t come—but now—now I am Maggie Oliphant, the most miserable girl at St. Benet’s, once again.”The knock was repeated. Miss Oliphant sprang to her feet.“Come in,” she said in a petulant voice.The handle of the door was slowly turned, the tapestry curtain moved forward, and a little fair-haired girl, with an infantile expression of face, and looking years younger than her eighteen summers, tripped a few steps into the room.“I beg your pardon, Maggie,” she said. “I had not a moment to come sooner—not one, really. That stupid Miss Turner chose to raise the alarm for the fire brigade; of course I had to go, and I’ve only just come back and changed my dress.”“You ought to be in bed, Rosalind: it’s past eleven o’clock.”“Oh, as if that mattered! I’ll go in a minute. How cosy you look here.”“My dear, I am not going to keep you out of your beauty sleep. You can admire my room another time. If you have a message for me, Rosalind, let me have it, and then—oh, cruel word, but I must say it, my love—Go!”Rosalind Merton had serene baby-blue eyes; they looked up now full at Maggie. Then her dimpled little hand slid swiftly into the pocket of her dress, came out again with a quick, little, frightened dart, and deposited a square envelope with some manly, writing on it on the bureau, where Maggie had been studyingPrometheus Vinctus. The letter covered the greater portion of the open page. It seemed to Maggie as if the Greek play had suddenly faded and gone out of sight behind a curtain.“There,” said Rosalind, “that’s for you. I was at Kingsdene to-day—and—I—I said you should have it, and I—I promised that I’dhelpyou, Maggie. I—yes—I promised. I said I would help you, if you’d let me.”“Thank you,” replied Miss Oliphant, in a lofty tone. The words came out of her lips with the coldness of ice. “And if I need you—I—promise—to ask your help. Where did you say you met Mr Hammond?” Maggie took up her letter, and opened it slowly. “At Spilman’s; he was buying something for his room. He—” Rosalind blushed all over her face.Maggie took her letter out of its envelope. She looked at the first two or three words, then laid it, open as it was, on the table.“Thank you, Rosalind,” she said in her usual tone. “It was kind of you to bring this, certainly; but Mr Hammond would have done better—yes, undoubtedly better—had he sent his letter by post. There would have been no mystery about it then, and I should have received it at least two hours ago. Thank you, Rosalind, all the same—good-night.” Rosalind Merton stepped demurely out of the room. In the corridor, however, a change came over her small childish face. Her blue eyes became full of angry flame, and she clenched her baby hand and shook it in the direction of the closed door.“Oh, Maggie Oliphant, what a deceiver you are!” she murmured. “You think that I’m a baby, and notice nothing, but I’m on the alert now, and I’ll watch—and watch. I don’t love you any longer, Maggie Oliphant. Who loves being snubbed? Oh, of course, you pretend you don’t care about that letter! But I know youdocare; and I’ll get hold of all your secrets before many weeks are over, see if I don’t!”
“My dear,” said Nancy Banister that same evening—“my dear and beloved Maggie, we have both been guilty of a huge mistake.”
“What is that?” asked Miss Oliphant. She was leaning back in a deep easy-chair, and Nancy, who did not care for luxurious seats, had perched herself on a little stool at her feet. Nancy was a small, nervous-looking person; she had a zealous face, and eager, almost too active movements. Nancy was the soul of bustling good-nature, of brightness and kindness. She often said that Maggie Oliphant’s laziness rested her.
“What is it?” said Maggie, again. “How are we in the wrong, Nance?”
She lifted her dimpled hand as she spoke, and contemplated it with a slow, satisfied sort of smile.
“We have made a mistake about Miss Peel, that is all; she is a very noble girl.”
“Oh, my dear Nance! Poor little Puritan Prissie! What next?”
“It is all very fine to call her names,” replied Nancy—here she sprang to her feet—“butIcouldn’t do what she did. Do you know that she absolutely and completely turned the tables on that vulgar Annie Day and that pushing, silly little Lucy Marsh. I never saw any two look smaller or poorer than those two when they skedaddled out of her room. Yes, that’s the word—they skedaddled to the door, both of them, looking as limp as a cotton dress when it has been worn for a week, and one almost treading on the other’s heels; and I do not think Prissie will be worried by them any more.”
“Really, Nancy, you look quite pretty when you are excited! Now, what did this wonderful Miss Peel do? Did she box the ears of those two detestable girls? If so, she has my hearty congratulations.”
“More than that, Maggie—that poor, little, meek, awkward, slim creature absolutely demolished them. Oh! she did it in such a fine, simple, unworldly sort of way. I only wish you had seen her! They were twitting her about not going in for all the fun here, and, above everything, for keeping her room so bare and unattractive. You know she has been a fortnight here to-day, and she has not got an extra thing—not one. There isn’t a room in the Hall like hers—it’s so bare and unhomelike. What’s the matter, Maggie?”
“You needn’t go on, Nancy: if it’s about the room, I don’t want to hear it. You know I can’t—I can’t bear it.”
Maggie’s lips were trembling, her face was white, she shaded her eyes with her hand.
“Oh, my darling, I am so sorry. I forgot—I really did! There, you must try and think it was any room. What she did was all the same. Well, those girls had been twitting her. I expect she’s had a nice fortnight of it! She turned very white, and at last her blood was up, and she just gave it to them. She opened her little trunk. I really could have cried. It was such a poor, pathetic sort of receptacle to be capable of holding all one’s worldly goods, and she showed it to them—empty! ‘You see,’ she said, ‘that I have no pictures nor ornaments here!’ Then she turned the contents of her purse into her hand. I think, Maggie, she had about thirty shillings in the world, and she asked Lucy Marsh to count her money, and inquired how many things she thought it would purchase at Spilman’s. Then, Maggie, Priscilla turned on them. Oh, she did not look plain, then, nor awkward either. Her eyes had such a splendid, good, brave sort of light in them. And she said she had come here to work, and she meant to work, and her room must stay bare, for she had no money to make it anything else. ‘But,’ she said, ‘I am not afraid of you, but Iamafraid of hurting those’—whoever ‘those’ are—‘those’—oh, with such a ring on the word—‘who have sent me here!’
“After that the two girls skedaddled; they had had enough of her, and I expect, Maggie, your little Puritan Prissie will be left in peace in the future.”
“Don’t call her my little Puritan,” said Maggie. “I have nothing to say to her.”
Maggie was leaning back again in her chair now; her face was still pale, and her soft eyes looked troubled.
“I wish you wouldn’t tell me heroic stories, Nancy,” she remarked, after a pause. “They make me feel so uncomfortable. If Priscilla Peel is going to be turned into a sort of heroine, she’ll be much more unbearable than in her former character.”
“Oh, Maggie, I wish you wouldn’t talk in that reckless way, nor pretend that you hate goodness. You know you adore it—you know you do! You know you are far and away the most lovable and bewitching, and the—the very best girl at St. Benet’s.”
“No, dear little Nance, you are quite mistaken. Perhaps I’m bewitching—I suppose to a certain extent I am, for people always tell me so—but I’mnotlovable, and I’mnotgood. There, my dear, do let us turn from that uninteresting person—Maggie Oliphant. And so, Nancy, you are going to worship Priscilla Peel in future?”
“Oh, dear no! that’s not my way. But I’m going to respect her very much. I think we have both rather shunned her lately, and Ididfeel sure at first that you meant to be very kind to her, Maggie.”
Miss Oliphant yawned. It was her way to get over emotion very quickly. A moment before her face had been all eloquent with feeling; now its expression was distinctly bored, and her lazy eyes were not even open to their full extent.
“Perhaps I found her stupid,” she said, “and so for that reason dropped her. Perhaps I would have continued to be kind if she had reciprocated attentions, but she did not. I am glad now, very glad, that we are unlikely to be friends, for, after what you have just told me, I should probably find her insupportable. Are you going, Nancy?”
“Yes, I promised to have cocoa with Annie Day. I had almost forgotten. Good-night, Maggie.”
Nancy shut the door softly behind her, and Maggie closed her eyes for a moment with a sigh of relief.
“It’s nice to be alone,” she said, softly, under her breath, “it’s nice, and yet it isn’t nice. Nancy irritated me dreadfully this evening. I don’t like stories about good people. I don’t wish to think about good people. I am determined that I will not allow my thoughts to dwell on that unpleasant Priscilla Peel, and her pathetic poverty, and her burst of heroics. It is too trying to hear footsteps in that room. No, I will not think of that room, nor of its inmate. Now, if I could only go to sleep!”
Maggie curled herself up in her luxurious chair, arranged a soft pillow under her head, and shut her eyes. In this attitude she made a charming picture: her thick, black lashes lay heavily on her pale cheeks; her red lips were slightly parted; her breathing came quietly. By-and-by repose took the place of tension—her face looked as if it were cut out of marble. The excitement and unrest, which her words had betrayed, vanished utterly; her features were beautiful, but almost expressionless.
This lasted for a short time, perhaps ten minutes; then a trivial circumstance, the falling of a coal in the grate, disturbed the light slumber of the sleeper. Maggie stirred restlessly, and turned her head. She was not awake, but she was dreaming. A faint rose tint visited each check, and she clenched one hand, then moved it, and laid it over the other. Presently tears stoic from under the black eyelashes, and rolled down her cheeks. She opened her eyes wide; she was awake again; unutterable regret, remorse, which might never be quieted, filled her face.
Maggie rose from her chair, and, going across the room, sat down at her bureau. She turned a shaded lamp, so that the light might fall upon the pages of a book she was studying, and, pushing her hands through her thick hair, she began to read a passage from the splendidPrometheus Vinctusof Aeschylus—
“O divine ether, O swift-winged winds!”
She muttered the opening lines to herself, then turning the page began to translate from the Greek with great ease and fluency:
“O divine ether, and swift-winged winds,O flowing rivers, and ocean with countless-dimpling smile,Earth, mother of all, and the all-seeing circle of the sun,to you I call;Behold me, and the things that I; a god, suffer at the hands of gods.Behold the wrongs with which I am worn away, and which I shall sufferthrough endless time.Such is the shameful bondage which the new ruler of the Blessed Ones hasinvented for me.Alas! Alas! I bewail my present and future misery—”
“O divine ether, and swift-winged winds,O flowing rivers, and ocean with countless-dimpling smile,Earth, mother of all, and the all-seeing circle of the sun,to you I call;Behold me, and the things that I; a god, suffer at the hands of gods.Behold the wrongs with which I am worn away, and which I shall sufferthrough endless time.Such is the shameful bondage which the new ruler of the Blessed Ones hasinvented for me.Alas! Alas! I bewail my present and future misery—”
Anyone who had seen Maggie in her deep and expressionless sleep but a few minutes before would have watched her now with a sensation of surprise. This queer girl was showing another phase of her complex nature. Her face was no longer lacking in expression, no longer stricken with sorrow, nor harrowed with unavailing regret. A fine fire filled her eyes; her brow, as she pushed back her hair, showed its rather massive proportions. Now, intellect and the triumphant delight of overcoming a mental difficulty reigned supreme in her face. She read on without interruption for nearly an hour. At the end of that time her cheeks were burning like two glowing crimson roses.
A knock came at her door; she started and turned round petulantly.
“It’s just my luck,” muttered Maggie. “I’d have got the sense of that whole magnificent passage in another hour. It was beginning to fill me: I was getting satisfied—now it’s all over! I’d have had a good night if that knock hadn’t come—but now—now I am Maggie Oliphant, the most miserable girl at St. Benet’s, once again.”
The knock was repeated. Miss Oliphant sprang to her feet.
“Come in,” she said in a petulant voice.
The handle of the door was slowly turned, the tapestry curtain moved forward, and a little fair-haired girl, with an infantile expression of face, and looking years younger than her eighteen summers, tripped a few steps into the room.
“I beg your pardon, Maggie,” she said. “I had not a moment to come sooner—not one, really. That stupid Miss Turner chose to raise the alarm for the fire brigade; of course I had to go, and I’ve only just come back and changed my dress.”
“You ought to be in bed, Rosalind: it’s past eleven o’clock.”
“Oh, as if that mattered! I’ll go in a minute. How cosy you look here.”
“My dear, I am not going to keep you out of your beauty sleep. You can admire my room another time. If you have a message for me, Rosalind, let me have it, and then—oh, cruel word, but I must say it, my love—Go!”
Rosalind Merton had serene baby-blue eyes; they looked up now full at Maggie. Then her dimpled little hand slid swiftly into the pocket of her dress, came out again with a quick, little, frightened dart, and deposited a square envelope with some manly, writing on it on the bureau, where Maggie had been studyingPrometheus Vinctus. The letter covered the greater portion of the open page. It seemed to Maggie as if the Greek play had suddenly faded and gone out of sight behind a curtain.
“There,” said Rosalind, “that’s for you. I was at Kingsdene to-day—and—I—I said you should have it, and I—I promised that I’dhelpyou, Maggie. I—yes—I promised. I said I would help you, if you’d let me.”
“Thank you,” replied Miss Oliphant, in a lofty tone. The words came out of her lips with the coldness of ice. “And if I need you—I—promise—to ask your help. Where did you say you met Mr Hammond?” Maggie took up her letter, and opened it slowly. “At Spilman’s; he was buying something for his room. He—” Rosalind blushed all over her face.
Maggie took her letter out of its envelope. She looked at the first two or three words, then laid it, open as it was, on the table.
“Thank you, Rosalind,” she said in her usual tone. “It was kind of you to bring this, certainly; but Mr Hammond would have done better—yes, undoubtedly better—had he sent his letter by post. There would have been no mystery about it then, and I should have received it at least two hours ago. Thank you, Rosalind, all the same—good-night.” Rosalind Merton stepped demurely out of the room. In the corridor, however, a change came over her small childish face. Her blue eyes became full of angry flame, and she clenched her baby hand and shook it in the direction of the closed door.
“Oh, Maggie Oliphant, what a deceiver you are!” she murmured. “You think that I’m a baby, and notice nothing, but I’m on the alert now, and I’ll watch—and watch. I don’t love you any longer, Maggie Oliphant. Who loves being snubbed? Oh, of course, you pretend you don’t care about that letter! But I know youdocare; and I’ll get hold of all your secrets before many weeks are over, see if I don’t!”