"The kiddie's pale," said Charlie accusingly. "She used to have a pretty colour when she was a little thing, and now she looks anæmic—and there are lines under her eyes. She's moping, Philip, that's what it is. Moping. No wonder she holds herself so badly!"
Philip did not like hearing strictures, that he could not feel to be altogether without foundation, upon the appearance of his daughter.
It cost him real and severe pain to let her go, although her presence at home gave him no happiness, and he did not attempt to conceal the extent of his sacrifice from Lily.
"Good-bye, my poor little girl. You shall have your own way, and go right away from home for a time. I hope it may answer, my poor child, and send you back some day to those who love you best in the world. God bless you."
This was Philip's valediction, sending Lily to her new surroundings with a leaden weight of guilt at her heart, and a reproachful picture of a sorrowful and deserted father returning to an empty house.
Having more or less lost hold upon her own convictions, she felt that, had it been possible, she would gladly have renounced Bridgecrap for ever, and returned to her father.
In this frame of mind, and with spirit encompassed by the accumulation of false values that had steadily been put before her in one form or another by the two small worlds that she had known—her home and the convent—it may readily be assumed that Lily began her career at Bridgecrap school under a severe handicap.
The standards there were altogether different from any that she had known yet.
"Honour" seemed to be the watchword of the place. The girls who excelled in games, or in examinations, did so "for the honour of the school." Their own personal honour was appealed to, freely and frequently. The convent system of surveillance would have been unthinkable, at Bridgecrap.
"I want you girls to have just the Public School code of honour that your brothers have——" Miss Melody herself often rousingly remarked.