"Poor thing!" she thought; "she doesn't get on well at all. I must ask Hope to help me with her. She, if anybody, will be able to make her feel easier and more at home."
There was no opportunity to speak with Hope then, for down the hall came tap, tapping, another little company of heels, and presently the portière was flung aside, and a troop of girls entered, and rushing up to Miss Marr, claimed her attention, with their gay and affectionate greetings. No, no time then to speak to any one privately and specially, only time to mention Dolly's name,—"Miss Dorothea Dering, girls,"—only time for this before the clock rung out the hour of six; and at the last stroke Miss Marr turned her head from the girls, who were flocking about her, and looked back at Hope Benham.
"Hope, will you take Dorothea—Miss Dering—in to dinner?"
Miss Marr did not see the change in Hope's face,—the sudden stiffening, as it were, of every feature; but Kate Van der Berg saw it. It was the same kind of stiffness that she had noticed when Hope came into the library,—the rigid stiffness that she had called a "stand-off sort of air," and there was that little hard pucker again between the eyes.
"Hope will take her in to dinner and be as polite to her as a Chinese mandarin, but she won't 'take' to her in any other way," was Miss Kate's shrewd reflection.
The position was not an agreeable one to Hope, but she bethought herself that it might have been much more disagreeable if Dorothea had remembered. That she did not, was perfectly apparent. But if she had remembered! Hope shuddered to think of what might have happened if this had been the case. How, with that incapacity for understanding sensitive natures unlike her own, this girl would in some abrupt way have referred to that past painful encounter,—painful, not because of the different conditions of things at that time, but painful because of that first cruel knowledge of the world that had come through it.
Kate Van der Berg was not far wrong when she prophesied that Hope would be as polite as a Chinese mandarin to the new-comer. Hope was very polite. You could not have found fault with a single word or action. Even Dolly saw nothing to find fault with; but all this politeness did not warm and cheer her, did not make her feel any easier or more at home. In sitting there at the dinner-table in the bright light she felt more uncomfortable than ever, for by this searching light she saw now very clearly the extreme plainness of each girl's attire; and as she caught every now and then the quick observing glance of one and another, she saw that she had made a great mistake,—that, instead of producing a fine impression by her fine dress, she had produced an unfavorable one, and was being silently criticised as rather loud and—oh, horror!—vulgar.
Miss Marr, looking across the table, did not fail to see that Hope was not so successful as usual in charming away the awkwardness and discomfort of a stranger. Presently she caught two or three little set speeches of Hope's,—polite little speeches, but perfectly mechanical,—and said to herself as Kate Van der Berg had said, "Hope doesn't take to her."
It was generally the custom for the girls to meet in the library before and after dinner for a few minutes' social chat; but on this night most of the girls, having just arrived, excused themselves, and went directly upstairs to unpack their trunks and settle their various belongings. Hope was very glad to make her excuses with the others, and escape to her room, that for a few days she was to occupy alone. She was busily engaged in putting the last things in their places, when there came a light tap on the door, and to her "Come in," Miss Marr entered, with a little apology for the lateness of her call, and an admiring exclamation for Hope's quick dexterity in arranging her belongings. After this she sat a moment in silence, with rather a perplexed look on her face; then suddenly she broke the silence.
"Hope," she said, "I am afraid I gave you an unpleasant task to perform to-night."