Less than a fortnight sufficed, not only for mutual acquaintance between the young ladies, but also to raise Alice to the height of popularity. Her dress and her opinions were quoted as law; her most trifling acts commented upon with favor; while her frequent remissness in the recitation room was excused on account of her inability to apply herself closely without bringing on an excruciating pain in her head. This artifice the young girl had resorted to immediately upon ascertaining that none of the tricks to evade duty so successful in Mrs. Lerow's school would avail here. So far, the plea of ill-health had worked well.
Alice had been in the recitation room but a few times before she found that she could neither make use of copied exercises, nor glance at her book held adroitly inside a fan. The teachers were so thorough, and required so many explanations of the rules, that no such artifices availed. She must either give her attention wholly to the business of study, or invent some plausible excuse for not doing so.
Alice, however, was too experienced in deceit to allow her tactics to fail her now, and therefore resorted to the plea of headache, which her natural delicacy of complexion enabled her to simulate with a good chance of success.
She had been twice to church, where even Miss Salsbury's strict ideas of propriety could detect nothing wrong. But the young girl had made good use of her eyes, and was aware, long before the extravagant compliments reached her through sisters of the young gentlemen, that her beauty had caused no slight degree of excitement among the susceptible youth ranged on the opposite seats in church.
Even the very gentlemanly-looking under teacher, sitting at the head of the back slip to overlook the conduct of his charge, had fixed his bright blue eyes on the new-comer with far more than ordinary interest.
At the close of the second week, Alice wrote her father that, though she was greatly disappointed at being compelled to leave Mrs. Lerow's school, she now was happy here, as the teachers were very kind, and aimed to do their scholars good. She complained, however, of headache on severe application to study; and requested her father to ask Miss Salsbury to allow her more time for exercise in the open air.
Mr. Saunders was delighted with the apparent improvement in his daughter. He wrote at once to the preceptress, begging the lady to give Alice all possible indulgence that her rules would allow in regard to the hours of exercise.
Hitherto the young girl had conducted herself with such seeming propriety that she completely blinded her teachers, so that Miss Salsbury, in endeavoring to make amends for her former distrust, gave the new scholar far more credit than she deserved.
In the mean time, these first weeks did not pass without some advance on the part of Dr. Bowles's pupils toward an acquaintance with the beautiful stranger. All those who could form any excuse to gain an entrance into the charmed mansion eagerly availed themselves of the opportunity. Alice, on one pretext and another, had been called down to the parlor and introduced to half a dozen of them. After this, projected walks and incidental meetings in the street caused the acquaintance to ripen faster than was desirable.
Miss Saunders, the beauty and heiress, the model of taste in dress and fashion, had already acquired more influence in the school than any young lady had done since its formation. But, sad to say, in order to attain this popularity, she had uttered, without one compunction of conscience, lies of politeness and lies of flattery almost without number.