The girl fixed her eyes upon her with a questioning appeal. They were the loveliest eyes she had ever seen, Miss Ferrol thought—large-irised, and with wonderful long lashes fringing them and curling upward, giving them a tender, very wide-open look. She seemed suddenly to gain courage, and also to feel it her duty to account for herself.
"I shouldn't have come here alone if I could have got father to come with me," she revealed. "But he wouldn't come. He said it wasn't the place for him. I haven't been very well since mother died, and he thought I'd better try the Springs awhile. I don't think I shall like it."
"I don't like it," replied Miss Ferrol, candidly, "but I dare say you will when you know people."
The girl glanced rapidly and furtively over the crowded room, and then her eyes fell.
"I shall never know them," she said, in a depressed undertone.
In secret Miss Ferrol felt a conviction that she was right; she had not been presented under the right auspices.
"It is rather clever and sensitive in her to find it out so quickly," she thought. "Some girls would be more sanguine, and be led into blunders."
They progressed pretty well during the meal. When it was over, and Miss Ferrol rose, she became conscious that her companion was troubled by some new difficulty, and a second thought suggested to her what its nature was.
"Are you going to your room?" she asked.
"I don't know," said the girl, with the look of helpless appeal again. "I don't know where else to go. I don't like to go out there" (signifying the gallery) "alone."