The interview was not a long one, however. In about ten minutes the carriage rolled away, and Dolly came back to the parlor with a touch of new color on her cheek, and a dying-out spark of fire in her eye; and though her spirits did not seem to have failed her, she was certainly a trifle moved by something.
“Let us have another waltz.” she said, rather as if she wished to dismiss Lady Augusta from the carpet “I will play this time. Phil, find a partner.”
She sat down to the piano at once, and swept off into one of Phil's own compositions, and from that time till the end of the evening she scarcely gave them a moment's pause, and was herself so full of sparkle and resources that she quite enraptured Gowan, and made the shabby room and the queer life seem more novel and entrancing than ever.
But when the guests were gone, and only Griffith, who was always last, remained with Phil and the girls, grouped about the fire, the light died out of her mood, and she looked just a trifle anxious and tired.
“Girls,” she said, “I have some bad news to tell you,—at least some news that isn't exactly good. Lady Augusta has given me what Belinda would call 'a warning.' I visit the select precincts of Bilberry House as governess no more.”
There is no denying it was a blow to them all. Her salary had been a very necessary part of the family income, and if they had been straitened with it, certainly there would be a struggle without it.
“Oh!” cried Mollie, remorsefully. “And you have just spent nearly all you had on my dress. And you do so want things yourself, Dolly. What shall you do?”
“Begin to take in the daily papers and peruse the advertising column,” she answered, courageously. “Never mind, it will all come right before long, and we can keep up our spirits until then.”
But, despite her assumed good spirits, when she went to see Griffith out of the front door, she held to his arm with a significantly clinging touch, and was so silent for a moment that he stooped in the dark to kiss her, and found her cheek wet with tears.
It quite upset him, too, poor fellow! Dolly crying and daunted was a state of affairs fraught with anguish to him.