"A trifle too proud, I should say," observed Miss Henniker.
"O it is not pride. I assure you it is not pride. Nobody could call Emmeline Claughton proud. I believe it is a form of shyness. She does not open out easily, and she wants a great deal of thawing. Her brothers are much more attractive,—though the one I know best is rather like her. But not altogether. No, certainly not altogether the same."
[CHAPTER IX]
WAS SOMETHING WRONG?
WITHIN ten minutes of the time fixed, Mrs. Stirring called at the door for "Miss Tracy," and Dorothea rose to go.
Miss Henniker still sat on perseveringly, doing her six calls in one, and the tête-à-tête on which Mrs. Effingham had set her heart never took place. Little conversation had passed between the elderly lady and the young girl; and each was conscious of disappointment.
"But we will meet again, my dear," Mrs. Effingham murmured, answering Dorothea's unspoken thought as they shook hands. "I don't quite know how long I may be absent, or whether I shall run up to town for a month in the spring. London never suits me for any length of time. But when I do return, I shall send for you. We will not forget one another meantime!"
So the longed-for call was over, and nothing had come of it: nothing was likely to come of it for the present. Dorothea, walking home in the dark beside the little lodging-house keeper, was conscious of feeling flat. She had had an amusing peep into a life which would have been very pleasant,—just enough of a peep to be tantalising and no more. It was all over now, at least for a good while to come. She would have to go back to her solitude and friendlessness. She could almost have echoed the words of Dolly Erskine, written not long before: "It does seem sometimes as if life were made up of disappointments."
Almost—not quite. Dorothea Tracy, with far less of outward brightness in her life than Dorothea Erskine, was far more disposed to look upon what brightness she had, and to turn her back upon the shadows. Also she had a more real and vivid belief in the Overshadowing Love which arranged every step of the path she had to tread,—even the disappointing steps.