“I think you’re too plain to go on the stage, myself,” was the withering reply, but it did not wither Isabelle.
“Beauty, my dear, is nothing; Art is everything,” was her unassailable reply.
So upon the wings of romance Isabelle floated through the spring term. She was to spend the summer at an inn in the mountains, as The Beeches was not to be opened. Her parents and teachers, encouraged by three months of good behaviour, believed that a permanent change of heart had taken place in the girl. On the day of her departure, Miss Vantine congratulated her upon her improvement, and alluded to the coming year as the crown of her achievements. Isabelle smiled politely, for she had thoroughly decided in her own mind that this was her farewell to school.
CHAPTER TWENTY
If Max and Wally had ever shown one grain of intelligence in regard to Isabelle they never would have taken her to this big, fashionable mountain inn where her field of adventure was so greatly enlarged. But they never had shown any discrimination in regard to her, so nothing could be expected of them at this stage.
Isabelle was a marked figure wherever she went now. She had forcibly taken over the matter of her own wardrobe in the spring of this year. Max had never made a success of it because she never gave any study to the girl’s points; she dismissed her as plain, and bought her things with indifference.