Maggie was leaning back again in her chair now; her face was still pale, and her soft eyes looked troubled.
“I wish you wouldn’t tell me heroic stories, Nancy,” she remarked, after a pause. “They make me feel so uncomfortable. If Priscilla Peel is going to be turned into a sort of heroine, she’ll be much more unbearable than in her former character.”
“Oh, Maggie, I wish you wouldn’t talk in that reckless way, nor pretend that you hate goodness. You know you adore it—you know you do! You know you are far and away the most lovable and bewitching, and the—the very best girl at St. Benet’s.”
“No, dear little Nance, you are quite mistaken. Perhaps I’m bewitching—I suppose to a certain extent I am, for people always tell me so—but I’m not lovable, and I’m not good. There, my dear, do let us turn from that uninteresting person—Maggie Oliphant. And so, Nancy, you are going to worship Priscilla Peel in future?”
“Oh, dear no! that’s not my way. But I’m going to respect her very much. I think we have both rather shunned her lately, and I did feel sure at first that you meant to be very kind to her, Maggie.”
Miss Oliphant yawned. It was her way to get over emotion very quickly. A moment before her face had been all eloquent with feeling; now its expression was distinctly bored, and her lazy eyes were not even open to their full extent.
“Perhaps I found her stupid,” she said, “and so for that reason dropped her. Perhaps I would have continued to be kind if she had reciprocated attentions, but she did not. I am glad now, very glad, that we are unlikely to be friends, for, after what you have just told me, I should probably find her insupportable. Are you going, Nancy?”
“Yes, I promised to have cocoa with Annie Day. I had almost forgotten. Good-night, Maggie.”
Nancy shut the door softly behind her, and Maggie closed her eyes for a moment with a sigh of relief.
“It’s nice to be alone,” she said, softly, under her breath, “it’s nice, and yet it isn’t nice. Nancy irritated me dreadfully this evening. I don’t like stories about good people. I don’t wish to think about good people. I am determined that I will not allow my thoughts to dwell on that unpleasant Priscilla Peel, and her pathetic poverty, and her burst of heroics. It is too trying to hear footsteps in that room. No, I will not think of that room, nor of its inmate. Now, if I could only go to sleep!”