These were not long in coming. She was in the study with the others that evening, and she was trying hard to write a paper on English literature—a subject that would have been actually fascinating at any other time—when Miss Groome, on her way to the staff sitting-room, put her head in at the door, saying quietly,—
“Dorothy, the Head wants to see you in her room; you had better go down at once.”
Dorothy rose up in her place; her heart was beating furiously and her senses were in a whirl.
“Oh, Dorothy, what is the matter? Have you got into a row?” asked Hazel kindly, while Margaret looked up with such a world of sympathy in her eyes that Dorothy was comforted by it.
“No, I’m not in a fix of that sort,” she managed to say, and she smiled as she went out of the room, though her face was very pale.
Her limbs shook and her teeth chattered as she went down the stairs and along the corridor to the private room of the Head.
“Silly chump, pull yourself together!” she muttered, giving herself a shake; then she knocked at the door, feeling a wild desire to run away, now that the interview loomed so near.
“Come in,” said the Head, and Dorothy opened the door, to find Miss Arden not at the writing table, which stood in the middle of the room, but sitting in a low chair by the open window.
Dorothy halted just inside the open door; she was still oppressed by that longing to run away, to escape from the consequences of her own act. She looked so shrinking, so downright afraid, as she stood there, that a grave fear of serious trouble came into the heart of the Head as she pointed to another low chair on the other side of the window, and bade Dorothy sit down.
“It is such a lovely evening,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Look through that break in the trees, Dorothy; you can just see the sun shining on the sea.”