“Glad you are with Grace—Miss Donnithorne, I mean. Hope you are enjoying yourself. I’ll expect you back on the evening of Tuesday. School begins on Wednesday. You mustn’t neglect your books. As glorious Milton says—”
He rhapsodised for two minutes, then stopped, glanced at Hermione, and said abruptly, “Don’t know this young lady.”
“Oh yes, you do, Professor,” said Miss Donnithorne. “This is my great friend, Miss Hermione Aldyce.”
“My father is a great admirer of yours, sir,” said Hermione, colouring slightly and looking very pretty.
“Eh—eh?” said the Professor. “Don’t like people to admire me. Good-bye, good-bye.—Good-bye, Miss Donnithorne—Grace, I mean—no, Miss Donnithorne, I mean. Good-bye, good-bye!”
He was out of the house and down the path before we had hardly time to breathe. Hermione went away a few minutes afterwards, and Miss Donnithorne and I had the evening to ourselves. We had supper almost in silence. There was a sort of constraint over us. I looked at Miss Donnithorne, and saw that she was very pale. I said to myself, “No wonder, poor thing! She has had some of father’s eloquence dinned into her ears; it is enough to scare any one.”
After a long period of silence, during which I was scraping more and more apple off the core of the baked one I had been eating, and trying to fiddle with my bread and get it to last as long as possible, she said abruptly, “One’s duty is sometimes difficult, is it not, little Rachel?”
“Is it?” I answered. “Yes, I suppose so.”
She looked at me again.
“You are the index-finger which points to the path of duty,” was her next remarkable speech.