She was about right; but had she overheard a conversation the day before between Lady Mildred and the lady-principal, she would have felt less philosophical as to the choice not having fallen on herself.
“I have a very nice set of pupils,” Miss Lloyd had said, “none whom Miss Meredon can in the least dislike associating with. Indeed, two or three of them belong to some of our leading families—Miss Knox, the vicar’s daughter, and the two little Fades, whose father is Colonel of the regiment stationed here, and Miss Waldron—she is a most charming girl, and, I may say, my most promising pupil, and nearly of Miss Meredon’s age.”
“Waldron,” Lady Mildred had repeated. “Oh, yes, to be sure, the lawyer’s daughter; I remember the name. Oh, indeed, very respectable families no doubt. But I wish you to understand, Miss Lloyd, that it is not for companionship but for lessons that I send you my niece. I wish her to make no intimacies. She knows my wishes and she will adhere to them, but it is as well you should understand them too.”
“So far as it is in my power, I shall of course be guided by them,” Miss Lloyd had replied somewhat stiffly. “All my pupils come here to learn, not to amuse themselves. But I can only act by Miss Meredon precisely as I do by the others. It would be completely contrary to the spirit of the—the establishment,”—Miss Lloyd’s one weakness was that she could not bring herself to speak of her “school,”—“of my classes, were I to keep any one girl apart from the others, ‘hedging her round’ with some impalpable dignities, as it were,” she went on with a little smile, intended to smooth down her protest.
Lady Mildred was not foolish enough to resent it, but she kept her ground.
“Ah, well,” she said, “I must leave it to my niece’s own sense. She is not deficient in it.”
Still the warning had not been without its effect. Miss Lloyd had no wish to offend the lady of Silverthorns. And a kindly idea of being of possible use to Fanny Lathom had also influenced her.
“If this girl is backward, as she probably is,” she thought, “Fanny may have a chance of giving her private lessons in the holidays, or some arrangement of that kind.”
But Charlotte was in happy ignorance of Lady Mildred’s depreciating remarks, as she sat, to all outward appearance, buried in her German translation, in reality peeping from time to time at the bright head in the corner of the room, round which all the sunshine seemed to linger, listening eagerly for the faintest sound of the pretty voice, or wishing that Miss Meredon would look up for a moment that she might catch the beautiful outlines of her profile.
“She is lovely,” thought Charlotte, “and she is most perfectly dressed, though it looks simple. And—it is true she seems sweet. But very likely that look is all put on, though even if it isn’t what credit is it to her? Who wouldn’t look and feel sweet if they had everything in the world they could wish for? I dare say I could look sweet too in that case. There’s only one comfort, I’m not likely to have much to do with her. If Fanny Lathom’s German is good enough for her I may be pretty sure she won’t be in the top classes. And any one so pretty as she is—she must give a great deal of time to her dress too—is sure not to be very clever or to care much for clever things.”