“Then of course you can see her; that will be nice. But will you come? I will write to fix the day after I get home. I should like you to have a good time with us. We shall be quite a big party—boys and girls, oh,—a lot of us, and I think there’ll be no end of fun. The little Hungerfords are coming, and Fred. Fred is such a nice boy. Will you come, Penelope? Do say ‘Yes.’”
Penelope’s eyes suddenly filled with tears.
“Will I come!” she said. “Why, I’d just love it beyond anything. Oh, you are good! Do you ask me because you pity me?”
“Well—yes, perhaps a little,” said Honora, colouring at this direct question—“but also because I want to like you. I know you are worth liking. No one who could look as you did last night could be unworthy. It was after I saw you that I asked mamma; and she said: most certainly you should come. It will probably be next week: I will write you fixing the day as soon as ever I get home. And now, I must be off. Good-bye, dear. You may be certain I will do my very utmost to give you a really happy time.”
Honora bent her stately head, pressed a little kiss on Penelope’s forehead, and the next minute had left her. Penelope’s first impulse had been to rush downstairs; but she restrained herself. She sat down on Honora’s vacant bed and pressed her hand to her forehead.
“Fun for me,”—she thought—“for me! I shan’t have lonely holidays. I shall go to one of the nicest houses in England, and be with nice people, good people, true people. There’s Brenda—of course I wish—I do wish Brenda were not at Marshlands; but I suppose I can’t have everything. I wish—I wish I could understand Brenda. Why did she force me to get all that money for her? I wonder if any of the girls who gave it me will be there. Well, well—I won’t be disagreeable—I am going to have a jolly time—I, who never have any fun. Oh, I am glad—I am very glad!”
About an hour later, the great house of Hazlitt Chase seemed quite silent and empty. Except for some housemaids who went to the different rooms in order to fold up the sheets and put away the blankets and take the curtains down from the windows and generally reduce the spotless, dainty chambers to the immaculate order of holiday times, Penelope did not see any one. She was glad that Mademoiselle d’Etienne was not in sight. She thought she could endure her holiday now that she had something to look forward to, if only Mademoiselle were not with her. But she could not stand the housemaids: they were so full of gossip and noise. Their accustomed reverence for the young ladies was not extended to the lonely girl who always spent vacation at Hazlitt Chase.
Penelope put on her hat, seized the first book she could find, and went out into the open air. The grounds still bore traces of yesterday’s revels. There was the wood—dark, cool, and beautiful—which had been used for that scene in which she took so distinguished a part. Penelope’s first desire was to get within the shade of the wood; but then she remembered how many things had happened there; how it was there that she had made terms with the girls with regard to the conditions on which she would act Helen of Troy. It was there, too, that Honora Beverley had found her when the play was over—when she was feeling so wrought up, so desolate, and, somehow, so ashamed of herself. She did not want to go into the wood. She walked, therefore, down one of the sunny garden paths, and at last came to a grassy sward with a huge elm-tree in the middle. There was shade under the elm. She eat down on the grass and opened her book. But she was not inclined to read. Penelope was never a reader. She had no special nor strong tastes. She could have been made a very nice, all-round sort of girl; her brain could have been well developed, but she would never be a genius or a specialist of any sort. Nevertheless, she had one thing which some of those girls who despised her did not possess; that was, a real, vibrating, suffering, longing, and passionate soul. She longed intensely for love, and she would rather be good than bad—that was about all.
She sat with her book open and her eyes fixed on the flickering sunlight and shade of the lawn just in front of her. After all she, Penelope, would have a good time—just like the other girls. She would come back to school able, like the other girls, to talk of her holidays, to describe where she went and what companions she found and what friends she made; to talk as the others talked of this delightful day and that delightful day. Oh, yes—she would have a good time! She pressed her hand to her eyes and her eyelids smarted with tears. It had been a very long time since Penelope had cried. Now, notwithstanding her sudden and unlooked-for bliss, there was a pain within her breast. She was terribly—most terribly disappointed in Brenda. She had not seen Brenda for a long time, and she had always rather worshipped her sister. When a little child, she had thoroughly revelled in Brenda’s beauty. When the time came that she and Brenda must part, little Penelope had sobbed hard in her elder sister’s arms—had implored and implored her not to leave her, and afterwards, when the separation had taken place, had been sullen and truly miserable for a long time.
Then she had been admitted to Mrs Hazlitt’s school on those special conditions which came to a few girls and had been arranged by those governors who put a certain number on the foundation terms of the school. The foundation girls were never known to be such by any of their companions. They were treated exactly like the others. In fact, if anything, they had a few more indulgences. Not for worlds would Mrs Hazlitt have given these children of poverty so cruel a time as to make their estate known to their companions.