There were hours when it seemed to her that she had never learned the
meaning of tediousness until the plain but hopeful Miss Spencer came to
live with her.
Rising from her chair, she moved away from the mirror, and wandered
restlessly to the pile of fashion magazines and festively decorated
"books on etiquette" that littered the table beside the chintz-covered
couch. "They don't know everything!" she thought contemptuously. How
hard she had tried to learn, and yet how confused, how hopeless, it all
seemed to her to-night! All the hours that she had spent in futile study
appeared to her wasted! At her first dinner she had felt as bewildered
and unhappy as if she had never opened one of those thick gaudy volumes
that had cost so much--as much as a box of chocolates every day for a
week. "I don't care," she said aloud, with sullen resolution. "I am
going to let them see that I don't want any favours."
The next afternoon she went out early in order to escape Gershom; but
when she came in, after a restless wandering in shops and a short drive,
she met him just as he was turning away from the door.
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