She was awakened by a very slight sound—by nothing more nor less than the gentle and very refined conversation of two girls, who sat under the oak-tree in which Annie’s hammock swung. Hearing the voices, she bent a little forward, and saw that the speakers were Dora Russell and Hester Thornton. Her first inclination was to laugh, toss down some leaves, and instantly reveal herself: the next she drew back hastily, and began to listen with all her ears.
“I never liked her,” said Hester—“I never even from the very first pretended to like her. I think she is underbred, and not fit to associate with the other girls in the school-room.”
“She is treated with most unfair partiality,” retorted Miss Russell in her thin and rather bitter voice. “I have not the smallest doubt, not the smallest, that she was guilty of putting those messes into my desk, of destroying my composition, and of caricaturing Mrs Willis in Cecil Temple’s book. I wonder after that Mrs Willis did not see through her, but it is astonishing to what lengths favouritism will carry one. Mrs Willis and Mr Everard are behaving in a very unfair way to the rest of us in upholding this commonplace, disagreeable girl; but it will be to Mrs Willis’s own disadvantage. Hester, I am, as you know, leaving school at Midsummer, and I shall certainly use all my influence to induce my father and mother not to send the younger girls here; they could not associate with a person like Miss Forest.”
“I never take much notice of her,” said Hester; “but of course what you say is quite right, Dora. You have great discrimination, and your sisters might possibly be taken in by her.”
“Oh, not at all, I assure you; they know a true lady when they see her. However, they must not be imperilled. I will ask my parents to send them to Mdlle. Lablanché. I hear that her establishment is most recherché.”
“Mrs Willis is very nice herself, and so are most of the girls,” said Hester, after a pause. Then they were both silent, for Hester had stooped down to examine some little fronds and moss which grew at the foot of the tree. After a pause, Hester said—
“I don’t think Annie is the favourite she was with the girls.”
“Oh, of course not; they all, in their heart of hearts, know she is guilty. Will you come indoors, and have tea with me in my drawing-room, Hester?”
The two girls walked slowly away, and presently Annie let herself gently out of her hammock and dropped to the ground.
She had heard every word; she had not revealed herself, and a new and terrible—and, truth to say, absolutely foreign—sensation from her true nature now filled her mind. She felt that she almost hated those two who had spoken so cruelly, so unjustly of her. She began to trace her misfortunes and her unhappiness to the date of Hester’s entrance into the school. Even more than Dora Russell did she dislike Hester; she made up her mind to revenge herself on both these girls. Her heart was very, very sore; she missed the old words, the old love, the old brightness, the old popularity; she missed the mother-tones in Mrs Willis’s voice—her heart cried out for them, at night she often wept for them. She became more and more sure that she owed all her misfortunes to Hester, and in a smaller degree to Dora. Dora believed that she had deliberately insulted her, and injured her composition, when she knew herself that she was quite innocent of even harbouring such a thought, far less carrying it into effect. Well, now, she would really do something to injure both these girls, and perhaps the carrying out of her revenge would satisfy her sore heart.