She did not know whether to go or to stay, though Mrs. Flushing had
commanded her to appear at tea. The hall was empty, save for Miss
Willett who was playing scales with her fingers upon a sheet of sacred
music, and the Carters, an opulent couple who disliked the girl, because
her shoe laces were untied, and she did not look sufficiently cheery,
which by some indirect process of thought led them to think that she
would not like them. Rachel certainly would not have liked them, if
she had seen them, for the excellent reason that Mr. Carter waxed his
moustache, and Mrs. Carter wore bracelets, and they were evidently the
kind of people who would not like her; but she was too much absorbed by
her own restlessness to think or to look.
She was turning over the slippery pages of an American magazine, when
the hall door swung, a wedge of light fell upon the floor, and a small
white figure upon whom the light seemed focussed, made straight across
the room to her.
"What! You here?" Evelyn exclaimed. "Just caught a glimpse of you at
lunch; but you wouldn't condescend to look at _me_."
It was part of Evelyn's character that in spite of many snubs which she
received or imagined, she never gave up the pursuit of people she wanted
to know, and in the long run generally succeeded in knowing them and
even in making them like her.
She looked round her.
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