"You have the consolation of knowing that you really know your work better than they."
"Do you know, I have had nearly enough of that kind of consolation? I could make shift now to do with an inferior, more tangible kind."
"You will get that too this time."
Mona sighed. "How I hope so!" she said. "Have some more Chablis, and let us drink to our joint success."
"I confess I was rather surprised that Miss Reynolds passed. I am not given to meddling in other people's affairs; but if Miss Reynolds is ever to take her degree at all, it was quite time you came back. Have you seen her yet?"
"Only for a few minutes. She is coming to spend the evening with me."
"You know she used to hide a capacity for very earnest work behind an aggravatingly frivolous exterior. Now it is just the other way. She professes to be in earnest, but I am sure she is doing nothing. You will wonder how I know, when I am not at hospital; but quite a number of the students have spoken of it. She never read widely. The secret of her success was that she took good notes of the lectures, and then got them up. But now they say she is taking no notes at all, scarcely. It was very much against her, of course, coming in in the middle of term; but one would have predicted that that would only have made her work the harder."
"I don't think so. That is not what I should have predicted. She really worked too hard last summer, and a thorough reaction is a good sign. I think that is quite sufficient to account for what you say. Miss Reynolds is a healthy animal, and one may depend upon her instincts to be pretty correct. She will accomplish all the more in the end, for letting her mind lie fallow this year."
But though Mona spoke with apparent certainty, she felt rather uneasy. Lucy's letters had been few and unsatisfactory of late; and her manner, when she met her old friend at the station, had been more unsatisfactory still.
"I can't force her confidence," Mona thought, when Miss Lascelles was gone; "but I hope she will tell me what is the matter. Poor little soul!"