There was, of course, the religious or rather the church side of the school in which Adelle might have taken refuge. This consisted of attending the small Episcopal Church in the neighboring village, where the excellent rector, a married man and the father of daughters, often directed his discourses at the Hall pews. But Adelle was no more religiously minded than her worldly little associates. There was nothing in the service of ritualistic beauty to arouse a latent sensuousness—nothing of color or form or sound. Religion in fact had even less to do with daily life in Herndon Hall, in spite of weekly church and morning prayers, than it had in the Church Street house. There was more or less talk about "the Church" and "the spiritual life," but, as Adelle soon perceived, the girls lied, cheated in their lessons, spoke spitefully of one another—did even worse—quite as people acted in the world outside. Even the teachers, she learned after a time, failed to connect the religious life with their personal conduct. "Rosy," the teacher with whom she had most to do the first year, aimed to be the companion rather than the guide of the girls in their frequent escapades. Miss Thompson herself, it was whispered among the older girls, suffered from something worse than "neuralgia" in those frequent attacks which incapacitated her. As for the general morale of the school, even more serious things could be said if it were not for fear that the authorities of Herndon Hall and others of a similar mind might ban this tale as unfit for "nice girls" to peruse, although they tolerate the deeds themselves. Of such matters, to be sure, Adelle knew nothing until later, for at first she was so much an outsider that she was not allowed to look beneath the decorous surface, and experienced merely petty attacks of selfishness and snobbery.
She might never have got completely beneath the surface if she had not been obliged to spend all her vacations at the Hall. The teachers were then off duty, when they were not visiting at the homes of their pupils, and spoke and acted before the silent girl quite freely because they considered her lacking mentally and harmless. And she was allowed to converse occasionally with the house servants, who sometimes spoke openly about Herndon Hall. She knew that the teachers had lively parties where wine was served freely. Adelle was supposed to be in her room on the third floor when these festivities were in progress, but she could not be unaware of them. And once she encountered "Rosy" in a curious state of exaltation that filled her with fear. At that time she did not understand the working of wine upon the spirit....
She was, of course, often dull and lonely, especially the first summer in the empty house above the steaming river. It was too hot much of the time to do more than loll about the porches with a book or some sewing. She tried to do a little gardening because she liked flowers, and occasionally took walks alone into the country. It was a lazy, unwholesome existence, and she was surprised to find herself looking forward to the day when her tormentors would return and the routine of school life would begin once more. During this first long vacation Mrs. Gardiner made a feeble effort "to do something" for the trust company's ward. She asked Adelle for a week's visit in the mountains, and shy as she was Adelle longed for that week at the end of August as an escape from prison. But, alas, the Gardiner children inopportunely contracted some minor disease and Mrs. Gardiner wrote to recall her invitation. Providence seemed determined to do nothing more for Adelle at present.
The only other event of this twelve weeks was the letter she wrote to Mr. Lovejoy, the manager of the livery-stable in Alton. This was the result of an acute attack of loneliness when, after a thorough canvass of her friends, Mr. Lovejoy's name was the only one she could think of. She told him in her little letter about the school, said she missed the Church Street house, and asked specifically after certain "roomers." But she never received a reply. Whether the teachers suppressed Mr. Lovejoy's letter, or he had never received Adelle's, or, which was more likely, he was not sufficiently stimulated by the girl's epistle to answer her, she never knew. After that one attempt Adelle made no effort to reach back into her past: she accepted the present with that strange stoicism that young people sometimes exhibit.
At last when she had laboriously completed "Little Dorrit" and was beginning heavily upon the "Christmas Stories," the vacation came to an end and the Herndon girls returned for the fall term. Adelle was now a familiar figure to them, and therefore less interesting to snub. She was merely ignored, which did not hurt her. Whatever might have been her slender expectations of happiness, she must have long since given up any idea of accomplishing them like other girls. She was becoming a perfect small realist, content to take the facts of life for what they seemed. She watched without conscious pain or envy the flurry of greetings and boastful exchanges of experiences among the girls the first day of their return to school. She was either ignored or passed by with a polite nod and a "Hello, Adelle! Did you have a good time with Rosy?"—while the other girls gathered into knots and resorted to each others' rooms for deeper confidences. It was an old story now, being an outsider, and the small, unobtrusive girl of fifteen was fast sinking into a state of apathy—the most dangerous condition of all.
The new school year, however, brought her something—the arrival of a friend. As she was dawdling with a book in a corner of the drawing-room, watching a circle of "old girls" who were whispering and giggling over some vacation tale, a small voice came to her ears,—
"Is it that you also are strange here?"
Adelle was so surprised at being addressed, also at the foreign-looking girl who had spoken, that she did not answer, and the other continued with a smile on her singularly red lips,—
"I speak English ver—ver badly!"
"What is your name?" Adelle asked bluntly.