She hoped Rosamond would lay down the hat and look at her with friendly eyes. Rosamond kept on with her scrutiny.
"Stay as long as you will. I'm sure we've got on beautifully together," she said with her air of amiable indifference.
After that Patricia felt she had no choice.
She followed Constance into Miss Ardsley's rooms without knowing how she got there, and even Elinor's gentle words of greeting sounded stiff and formal to her quivering, over-wrought humor. Miss Ardsley's genteel accents grated horribly on her. She was anxious to have the interview over and she readily agreed to take the room at once, without evincing any interest in it or anything else. All that she wanted just then was to get away by herself, so afraid was she that the tears so near her eyelids might pop out at any moment.
Elinor very properly put her changed manner down to the incident of the night before, and she did not insist on going up with her to talk it over with Miss Merton, as she would have done if all had been as usual between Patricia and herself.
She sighed a little as she kissed her good-bye in the corridor, and wondered sadly at the stony face her dear Miss Pat turned to her at parting.
"You'll want me to come over and help you move?" she asked, with a world of tender concern in her tones.
Patricia heard only the mere words. She was wild to get away before she disgraced herself before the others. "I'll move in tomorrow. Constance will help me if you're busy," she said, hardly knowing how her words sounded.
Elinor went home too hurt to reply and too generous to insist on intruding, while Patricia ran upstairs and shut herself in her room, where she could hear the murmur of Rosamond and the saleswoman going on monotonously.
"I won't wait another moment; I'll go straight down and get the key," she said, springing up after a bad quarter of an hour, wherein all her idols had tottered from their pedestals. "I can't stand being cooped up forever like a mummy!"