“You don’t really mean it?” gasped Lottie, horrified. Her cheeks were scarlet, and it was evident that she was profoundly uncomfortable, but as she met the triumphant eyes her face softened, and she made a valiant effort to retain composure. “You mean to say you have turned into a governess at sixteen—you who were always at the bottom of the class, and couldn’t get a sum right to save your life! Poor little girls, I pity their education! How did you ever persuade the mother to take you?”
Mamzelle Paddy tossed her head with complacent pride.
“’Deed, me dear, the room was packed with them, and natives at that, and she chose me before the whole bunch. I’m not supposed to teach them anything but French, and I don’t teach that except by playing games. But I keep them from crying and quarrelling, and ye don’t need to be head of your class for that! ’Twasn’t cleverness she took me for, as she told me plainly the first day I went; ’twas m’influence!”
A smothered laugh went round the box at the sound of this curious compound word, uttered in tones of complacent pride; but Lottie Vane did not laugh, and her hand stretched out involuntarily and clasped the little fingers which lay on the side of the box. Her face lost its supercilious expression, and grew sweet and womanly.
“Dear little Pixie,” she said softly, “I don’t pity the pupils after all. I think they are very well off. May I come over and be introduced to them and their mother? She must be a very wise woman.”
The two girls walked forward together towards the spot where Mrs Wallace was sitting, and the supercilious man looked after them with thoughtful eyes. He had always admired Miss Lottie Vane, though he had privately sneered at her snobbish tendencies, but it occurred to him to-day that he had been over-hasty in judgment. How sweet she had looked as she answered her little friend, how kindly had been the tones of her voice! He felt his heart thrill with the beginning of a new and deeper interest.