“They were very kind,” she said, with a look of great humility at her mother. “I never saw them except that one time; but they were very kind.”
“You have never told me anything about the ball, there have been so many other things to think of. I ought to have remembered, my poor little Ally, you would be very forlorn without me or some one; but then I thought your cousin Alicia—Didn’t you have any dancing then? Didn’t you enjoy yourself at all?”
“She danced all the evening,” said Mab; “I saw her. I never could get near her to say a word.”
“Then what does this lady mean?” the mother said.
Poor Ally was very nearly crying with distress and shame, though there was nothing to be ashamed about. Oh, yes! there was cause for shame, and she felt it. She had been very thankful for Mrs. Rochford’s notice. She had been thankful to meet him, to feel herself at once transformed from the neglected little poor relation, whom no one noticed, to the admired and petted little heroine of the other set, who were not the great people, and yet who looked just as well as the great people, and danced as well, and were as well dressed, and so much more kind. And now she felt ashamed of it all—of them and him, and all the people who had made the evening so pleasant. She did not like to tell her story—how she had been neglected, and how she had been admired, and the comfort the Rochford set had been to her, and now that she was ashamed of them all—for that was the conclusion which she could not disguise from herself. Now that she was Sir Edward Penton’s daughter, now that she herself was to be the first at Penton, she was ashamed to have known nobody but the Rochfords, and she was ashamed of being ashamed. The family solicitor, that was all—a sort of official person, whose duty it was to take a little notice of her, not to let her feel herself neglected, whom she had been so glad to cling to. And now? There was no word of contempt that Ally did not heap upon herself. She was not sure if girls were ever called “snobs,” but this she was sure of, that if so, then a snob was what she was.
“Mother, they’re both true,” she said. “It was—oh, dreadful at first! I didn’t know any one. I knew some of them by sight, but that was all. And nobody spoke to me. I should have liked to go through the floor or run away, but I hadn’t the courage. And then I saw him—I mean Mr. Rochford, you know, who has been so often here. And he asked me to dance; and when he saw I had no one to go to, took me to his mother. And they were so kind; and I enjoyed myself very much after that. But—” said Ally, and stopped short.
Oh, odious little traitor that she was! But she could not say what was in her heart besides, which was—oh, horrible snobbishness, miserableness, unworthiness!—that she never wished to see these good Samaritans any more.
“When I return her call I must thank her for being so kind to you,” said Lady Penton, with a cloudy countenance.
And this was all she said. Nor was there any further conversation on the subject—none, at least, which Mab heard. She had her own theory on the subject, and formed her little history at once, which was founded on Ally’s faint little emphasis, “I saw him.” “Him” Mab decided to be a lover, whom, now that the Pentons had risen in the world, the family would no longer permit to be spoken of, but whom Ally favored in secret, and to whom she had given her heart. It was a mistake which was very natural—the most usual thing in the world. Mab decided that it was a great blunder for the mother and sisters to interfere. What could they do? except to put the other party on their guard? Our comprehensions are limited by our experiences. To understand the state of mind in which Ally was—the repugnance she felt toward the people whom she had liked so much, and who had been so kind to her, and her disgust at herself for that other disgust which she could not conquer—was what no one at Penton Hook was the least able to do.