Tired and disappointed, they got a cab, and no more forlorn girls crossed the busy town than those two that day.
At the other station, by some mishap, but one clerk was left to attend to the demands of first, second, and third class passengers, and there was a crowd on either side. Grace nearly gave it up in despair, and had only just time to run for her train, leaving her dignity for the moment to take care of itself.
When they got to Renton they looked about—no one was there. Their spirits again sank considerably, and it was with ruffled temper, coming of wounded self-consequence, that Grace got into a cab with her sister, and crawled on up the hill to Renton House.
What she had expected, or what her dreams had been, is a matter of no moment, for they vanished there and then. A short tree-less drive up to a square house of no great size, with a good honest cabbage-garden beside and behind it,—a field, in which fluttered some household washing, and the town, smoky and full of factories below it, this was the palace of her dreams, the Renton House to which she had already invited (luckily in a very vague manner) her favourite schoolfellows.
Robert, who wore no particular clothes, answered the door, and showed them into a large primly-furnished room, and went off to announce their arrival to Mr. Sandford.
He came in and received them kindly enough, told them to wash their hands quickly as dinner was ready. But his pompous manner chilled them. Something in it seemed to say so plainly to them—"You have no real claim upon me, but I am giving you my countenance all the same."
In their room alone, the sisters looked at each other for a moment in silence; then their hearts sank, and forgetting time, and all but their disappointment, they cried in each others arms long and bitterly.
It was characteristic of Grace, that, in all her trouble and depression, she still thought of changing her dress. Dinner was ready, and they were twice sent for, but though Margaret was ready she would not go down by herself; and her sister, who wished to make an impression, was particular to the last item; the correct tying of a bow, and the placing of it exactly where it should produce the desired effect.
They went downstairs, and found the drawing-room empty; lower still to the dining-room, where Mr. Sandford had an unpromising scowl upon his brow.
"Less might have served you," he said, glancing at the girls, "when I was waiting."