Mrs Harrowby consented. There were not many people who could refuse Hebe anything she had set her heart upon. Besides, the vicars wife had no objection to the proposal. She was kind-hearted, if a trifle dictatorial, and not without a pleasant strain of humour, as well as a fair amount of sympathy.
So, on the appointed afternoon, Blanche and Stasy made their way to the vicarage.
“How pretty you look, Blanchie!” said Stasy, with a gush of sisterly enthusiasm. “I do think you are getting prettier and prettier. England suits you, I suppose,” with a little sigh.
Blanche laughed.
“Suits my looks, I suppose you mean?” she said lightly. Stasy’s admiration amused, but did not much impress her. Indeed she was not of the nature to be much impressed by any admiration. She knew she was “pretty,” as she called it to herself, but the subject never dwelt in her thoughts. And she was entirely without vanity. Many a girl of far less beauty, of no beauty at all, gives a hundred times more consideration to the question of outward appearance than would have been possible under any circumstances for Blanche Derwent.
There seemed to be quite a number of people in the vicarage drawing-room when they entered it. Stasy—who, to tell the truth, was feeling a trifle shy, though wild horses would not have drawn such a confession from her—had insisted on coming some minutes later than the hour at which they had been invited.
“I don’t want to seem so very eager about it,” she said to Blanche. “And if we go early, we are sure to be set down to talk to some of the Green people. It would be horrid.”
To some extent, she was caught in her own trap. A chair was offered her between two girls, neither of whom she had seen before, and who, she immediately decided, must belong to the neighbours she certainly had no reason to feel friendliness towards. For, whatever had been the motive, and though very possibly their staying away was from the social point of view more gratifying than their calling would have been, no kindliness of any kind had been shown or attempted by the good folk of Pinnerton Green to the little family who had come as strangers among them.
Stasy glanced cautiously at the girls beside her. One was plain, not to say ugly, and dressed with almost exaggerated simplicity. Her features were heavy and ill-assorted; her nose was large, and nevertheless seemed too short for the curious length of her face; her eyes—no, she was not looking Stasy’s way—her eyes could not be pronounced upon.
“She is really ugly,” thought Stasy; “I haven’t seen any English girl as ugly as she is. And how very plainly she is dressed: I wonder if it is because she knows she is ugly. It cannot be that she’s poor: all these common people here are rich. Her dress is only”—Stasy gave another covert glance at the cloth skirt touching her own—“only—no, it’s good of its kind, though so plainly made, and yet—”