“No,” agreed Charlotte with some satisfaction, “she does not try. I don’t want her to, and I don’t try myself. All the same, I am glad she doesn’t.”
“Some of the girls say she is affected,” said Gueda.
“It doesn’t prevent them all from toadying her in a disgusting way,” said Charlotte, contemptuously.
“Not all of them,” said Gueda. “Some of them are nicer than that, and are too proud to make friends with a girl who never seems able to speak to any of us naturally. Some think her manners are very ‘distinguished,’ and what one must expect from Lady Mildred’s niece.”
“Vulgar snobs!” ejaculated Charlotte.
“What can you expect?” said Gueda. “Perhaps she is really more shy than anything else, and yet I hardly think so. Now and then she seems as if she was ready to burst out laughing, and as eager to chatter and talk nonsense as any of us. And sometimes she has a very curious look in her face, as if she were almost asking pardon of us all. And oh, Charlotte, how pretty she is!”
“You needn’t repeat that. I hear it about fifty times an hour. And she certainly does not look as if she were asking pardon of me every time she is put before me,” said Charlotte. “Now do let us talk of something else, Gueda. Don’t spoil the last few days before you go.”
And Claudia, in blissful ignorance of all the discussion she evoked, was just then writing home one of her happy, almost triumphant letters, telling of new laurels gained and satisfactory opinions everywhere. She spoke warmly of Lady Mildred’s kindness, and kept silence on her strangely trying temper, as well as on the difficulties she was growing more conscious of in her school-life.
“It would be wrong, distinctly wrong,” she said to herself, “to complain of Aunt Mildred. So there, I have no choice. But about school—I wonder if mamma could say anything to help me? No, I am afraid not. I must just not mind if I am disliked.”
So she told of nothing but of good. Still Mrs Meredon, being a remarkably clever and acute woman,—a woman too of somewhat more determined and less emotional calibre than Charlotte’s gentle, sympathising mother,—read between the lines of her daughter’s letter and saw some rocks ahead.