“She would only laugh in my face. Hush! here comes some one.”
It was Sophie Chalk. She looked rather sharply at us both, and said she could not find Helen anywhere.
And the days were to go on in outward smoothness and private discomfort, Miss Sophie exercising her fascinations on the whole of us.
But for having promised that lame child to call again in Torriana Square, I should not have cared to go. It was afternoon this time. The servant showed me upstairs, and said her mistress was for the moment engaged. Mabel Smith sat in the same seat in her black frock; some books lay on a small table drawn before her.
“I thought you had forgotten to come.”
“Did you? I should be sure not to forget it.”
“I am so tired of my lessons,” she said, irritably, sweeping the books away with her long thin fingers. “I always am when they teach me. Mrs. Smith has kept me at them for two hours; she has gone down now to engage a new servant.”
“I get frightfully tired of my lessons sometimes.”
“Ah, but not as I do; you can run about: and learning, you know, will never be of use to me. I want you to tell me something. Is Sophonisba Chalk going to stay at Lady Whitney’s?”