That one trenchant question was sufficient to reduce Rowena to the depths of silent despair, and the two sisters descended the staircase with aspects equally lugubrious and mournful.
It was not a cheerful send-off, despite all the efforts of the family, who stood shivering in the porch to wave farewells, and call out encouraging prognostications so long as the motor remained in sight. Dreda drew a big sigh of relief as they turned out of the drive, and spun rapidly along the highway. The necessity for keeping up a part was over, and involuntarily she began softly whistling beneath her breath, for in truth she was by no means so miserable as she had striven to appear.
Novelty was the breath of Dreda’s nostrils. Any novelty to her was better than none, and if the chance of returning to the house had at that moment been vouchsafed, it is doubtful if she would have accepted it at the cost of missing the excitements of the next few hours.
The car spun along strongly, so that the twenty miles’ distance was speedily covered, and before Etheldreda was half-way through her dreams it had turned in at a gate, and there before her eyes lay Grey House, a square, pretentious-looking building, with a door in the middle and a stretch of three windows on either side. There, also—oh! thrilling and exciting moment—pressed against the panes of an upper window were a number of round white discs, which must obviously be the faces of pupils watching the advent of the new girl!
Dreda sat up, and throwing back her golden mane, tossed a laughing remark to her mother—the first she had volunteered since leaving home, and showed her white teeth in a determined smile. If she were fated to arrive at all, she would arrive as a conqueror who would be regarded with envy and admiration. Privately, she might consider herself a martyr, but that was not a rôle in which she chose to appear before other people. She was smiling as she entered the drawing-room after her mother, smiling as Miss Bretherton came forward to greet them, smiling still, a forced, fixed smile, as she listened to the conversation between the two ladies.
“Hope we shall be very happy together—”
(“I shan’t. I don’t like you a bit! Scraggy, cross-looking thing! Your nose looks as if it would cut!”)
”...Dreda is fond of society. She will enjoy working with other girls!”
(“Shan’t, then! I shall hate it. I should have enjoyed it in Paris.”)
”...Beginnings always are a little difficult; but young people soon adapt themselves!”