It was the next morning just after breakfast that Miss Marr, coming out of her little parlor, met Hope in the hall, and said to her,—

"I'm afraid you did not sleep well, my dear; you look heavy-eyed."

"No, I didn't sleep very well," answered Hope, coloring slightly.

"Did Miss Dering keep you awake?"

"Y—es, I suppose so—but—it wasn't so bad as I expected."

Miss Marr laughed. "Oh! it was not so bad as you expected. She wears better on further acquaintance. I'm glad to hear that, but I am afraid she's a great chatterer. However, her room will be in order to-night, so you won't be together again."

Hope drew a deep breath of satisfaction, and her face showed unmistakable signs of relief. Miss Marr took note of these signs, and thought,—

"It is not like Hope to take prejudices against people. I wonder what it is that she finds so unbearable in this girl. It might help me a good deal if I knew."

A few guarded questions at once revealed Miss Marr's state of mind to Hope, and she immediately hastened to say,—

"I'm afraid I've given you a wrong impression; it is only a personal feeling with me, Miss Marr. I—I met this girl, Dorothea,—they called her 'Dolly' then,—five years ago, when I was only ten years old. She has forgotten me, but I never forgot her, for she spoke so rudely, so unkindly to me at the time, that I can't get over it. That's all. I dare say the other girls will like her, and I—I've nothing else against her."

Miss Marr touched Hope's cheek with her finger,—a caressing way she had at times, and said gently,—

"Thank you, Hope, for being so honest; I can always trust you."

Hope had been with Miss Marr for the past year, and had won her confidence and love by the fine sweet strain of her character.

"She's such an upright, sympathetic little soul, I can trust her with anything," the Frenchwoman had said to her friends.

It was one of these friends,—the wife of a scientific man,—that the Benhams had become acquainted with in Paris, who had suggested Hope as a pupil to Miss Marr, and told her something of John Benham's career.

"Such an interesting man," the friend had said, in summing up her account of him,—"what we call a self-made man, because he has had to cultivate his tastes by books and private study unhelped by the schools; but God-made after the finest pattern if ever a man was, and with a nice sensible wife and this dearest little daughter, whom they have so wisely determined to send home to their own country to complete her education."

Angelique Marr recalled these words as she looked at Hope. It was just at that moment that a door farther down the corridor was energetically flung open, and Miss Dorothea Dering appeared with her arms full of books. Hope started, and was turning away in the other direction, when Dolly called out,—

"Oh! Miss—Miss—er—er—Benham, wait a minute; I want to ask you something."

Hope waited, putting a detaining hand at the same time upon Miss Marr, who made a movement to step back into her parlor.

"I wanted to ask you," said Dolly, as she hurried up, "if you would let me practise with you sometimes. You play a great deal higher kind of music than I do, but I can play better things, and I've got a lovely violin duet that I want awfully to practise with somebody; and if you only would!" with an appealing glance at Hope.

There was a slight pause, in which Miss Marr regarded Hope with a little curiosity. Hope Benham's violin-playing was known throughout the school as something out of the common, and the best of the piano pupils felt that they were hardly up to playing her accompaniments; and here was this new-comer proposing a violin duet with her! What would be Hope's answer to this proposition? There was only the slightest possible pause; then came this answer,—

"My violin practice is very rigidly confined to the studies that my teacher gives me, and he is very unwilling that I should play anything else."

"Oh, music-teachers are always that way! I don't mind 'em," cried Dolly, airily; "and anyway, you can try some things with me in off times, can't she, Miss Marr?"

"Oh, I never encourage pupils to disobey a teacher," answered Miss Marr, a little amused at Dolly's density in appealing thus to her.

"Of course not. I forgot; you don't seem like a teacher or anything of that sort yourself to me; you seem somehow like one of us," said Dolly. Then turning again to Hope, with a confident nod,—

"You just ask your teacher if you can't play with me at off times, won't you?"

Hope murmured something vague in the way of reply, but Dolly had no doubt that her proposition would be carried into effect in due season. In the mean time, as it had not yet been decided about her own violin lessons, she determined to practise what she could by herself, and at odd intervals after this there was heard issuing from her room a variety of shrill scrapings, at which the girls would shrug their shoulders, and shake their heads at one another. One day Kate Van der Berg accosted Hope with this question,—

"When do you begin practising that duet with Miss Dering?"

"Oh, how did you hear about that?"

"Not from you, Miss Closemouth."

"But Miss Marr, I know, didn't speak of it."

"No, Miss Dorothea Dering herself told us that when things were all settled, the classes arranged, etc., you were going to practise a violin duet with her."

"She spoke to Miss Marr and to me about it," answered Hope, evasively.

"Oh, she spoke to Miss Marr and you about it, and Miss Marr and you didn't say 'Yes,' and you thought that would be enough of an answer; and it would, ordinarily, but it won't in this case, you'll see, my dear. Miss Dorothea Dering is used to having her own way, and, Hope, I'm of the opinion she'll have it now."

Hope straightened her slim figure, and that little pucker came into her forehead that Kate Van der Berg knew so well, whereat Kate laughed, and said gayly,—

"How ungrateful you are, Hope!"

"Ungrateful! how am I ungrateful?"

"Not to embrace your opportunities and respond to such overtures. Hope, what is it that you dislike about Dorothea Dering? I saw from the first that you had taken a dislike to her."

Hope flushed uncomfortably.

"And she seems to admire you immensely. What is it? What have you seen in her? what do you know about her?"

"I don't know anything about her for anybody else, only I—It is entirely my feeling; it needn't prejudice anybody else," cried Hope, dismayed.

Kate Van der Berg was a warm-hearted, demonstrative girl, and at the trouble in Hope's voice and in her face she flung her arms around her, and said,—

"There, there, never mind about her or what I said. It's all right; or you are all right, whatever she may be."

Hope put her cheek down upon Kate's shoulder for a moment; then suddenly lifting her head, she burst out,—

"No, no, you mustn't think as you do, that there's anything very bad that I'm holding back. I mustn't let you think so; it would be wicked in me. It is only just about myself,—something that she said to me long ago,—five years ago. She's forgotten it; she's forgotten me. I only met her for a few minutes, two or three times."

"The disagreeable thing! I shall hate her!" Kate cried impulsively.

"No, no, don't say so. I dare say you would have liked her if I—if I could have kept what I felt to myself, and I thought I did, I thought I did. Oh, dear!" and Hope stopped abruptly, as she realized that her own excitement was making matters worse.

"Liked her! Not if she could have said anything bad enough to hurt you like this,—to have hurt you for five years."

"It doesn't hurt me as it did then, but I remember it."

"Well, that shows what a hurt it must have been."

"What she said was out of ignorance. She didn't know any better," Hope went on, determined to do the honorable thing by her childish enemy.

"I don't believe she knows much better now. Oh, you needn't try to smooth it all over to me, you little conscientious thing; it's of no use."

"But, Kate, promise me one thing,—that you won't—you won't talk to the other girls about it."

"Yes, I'll promise you that I'll be as mum as an oyster."

"And you won't—you won't be—"

"Disagreeable to her?" interrupted Kate, laughing. "Well, I'll try not to be; I'll take pattern by you, and be so politely fascinating that she'll ask me to play duets with her."

Hope could not help laughing at this, but all the time she felt disturbed and troubled. Kate Van der Berg had playfully jibed at her for her conscientiousness. Kate thought she was over-conscientious, and she might have been sometimes, for she was a sensitive creature, with high notions and ideas of truth and justice and honor, and her father had developed these ideas by his advice and counsel. One of the things that he had impressed upon her was never to take advantage of any one, especially any one that you had had a quarrel with. "Fair play, my dear, always; remember that, and so you must remember to be open and above board after you've had any differences with people, and never let yourself say or hint damaging things about them, to prejudice others," was one of his favorite pieces of counsel, put in one form and another, at various times. Hope thought of these words even when she joined in Kate Van der Berg's laughter. She thought of them after Kate had left her, and all through the rest of the day they would start up to torment her. At last she said to herself: "This is over-conscientious, for I didn't mean to prejudice any one against Dolly Dering. I tried not to show how I felt, and if I didn't succeed, it isn't my fault; but I'm a great goose to fuss so. Kate will keep her promise, I know, and Miss Dorothea Dering won't be unpopular because of anything I have said."

So the matter rested, and the days went on, the school arrangements settling into order, and the school companionships falling into the usual adjustment by personal choice. When everything seemed to be running smoothly, Dolly came forward again with her proposition. It was one afternoon when she heard the sound of a violin floating down from the music-room. It was the first time she had heard it, and obeying her headlong impulse, she ran swiftly up the stairs and knocked at the door. A voice called out, "Come in;" and obeying it, she found herself not only in the presence of Hope, but of Kate Van der Berg, Myra Donaldson,—Hope's lately returned room-mate,—and Anna Fleming. Myra was seated at the piano, a sheet of music before her, waiting for Hope to signal to her. All the girls looked up and bowed as Dolly entered, but no one spoke. They were intent upon watching Hope, who, bow in hand, was carefully testing the strings that she had just tightened.

Dolly came round and stood beside Kate Van der Berg at the back of the piano, which was a parlor grand placed half-way down the room. She started to whisper, "What is it they—" but was checked by Kate's "Hush! hush!" and just then the bow was brought to bear softly upon the strings, as Hope began playing the sonata in F major by Beethoven. Once or twice as the music progressed, Kate glanced at Dolly with a new interest. What was this cool intruder—for such Kate dubbed her—thinking as she listened to these exquisitely rendered strains? Was she properly astonished and ashamed of herself for proposing to join such a performer in a violin duet? Dolly's face betrayed nothing, however. She simply stood perfectly still, leaning a little forward against the piano, her big black eyes fixed in a steady gaze, now upon Hope's violin bow, and now upon Hope herself. She stood thus until near the close, when the difficult and delightful passages approach the climax. Then her eyes wandered, her features relaxed, and when the end came, she was ready with a little outburst of vigorous applause, which she followed up with,—

"You ought to play in public at concerts. But how you must have worked! I'm not up to the classic, and I can't play like you, anyway. What I like, what I love, is dance music,—waltzes,—and I've got the loveliest duet in that time. It'll be as easy as A B C too. I'll run and get it now, and my violin, and you just try it with me, and—oh, say, have you asked your teacher what I told you to? You haven't? Well, never mind for anybody's permission. 'T won't take you long; I'll—"

"You really must excuse me, but I can't play any more now," interrupted Hope's voice, as Dolly turned to go for her violin.

"Oh, dear, I wish I'd come sooner, before you had started off on that long thing. But will you play with me to-morrow about this time? Or why not to-night after dinner?"

"But," with a queer little smile, "I haven't asked my teacher's permission yet."

"No, and I don't believe you care two pins about that," answered Dolly.

"Well, I don't believe it would be of any use," responded Hope, guardedly.

"Then say to-night after dinner."

"To-night after dinner I had promised to read French with Kate Van der Berg."

"Oh, well, there'll be time enough for that too; and you won't mind, will you, if she plays with me first?" addressing Kate.

"Mind? I shall mind a great deal," Kate made haste to reply. "I know how it is when these musical people get started; they never know when to stop. No, she's promised to me to-night, and I'm not going to let her off."

All this was said in a bright, laughing way, that hadn't an atom of unfriendliness in the tone of it; and Dolly had not the faintest idea that her proposition was being decidedly snubbed, as she listened. The other girls were wiser. The moment that Hope refused to play in the way she did, they knew that the proposition was distasteful to her; and when Kate Van der Berg came to the support of this refusal with that quick, bright decision, they knew that she knew more than they did why the proposition was distasteful.

Anna Fleming, who was Kate's room-mate, said to her a little later,—

"Kate, didn't you think it was rather disobliging of Hope Benham not to play that duet with Dorothea Dering?"

"Disobliging! Well, that is a way to put it. I think it was the most forward, presuming—what my brother Schuyler would call 'the cheekiest thing' for that girl to take it for granted that such a violinist as Hope Benham would want to practise her little rubbishy waltzes with her."

"But she didn't know probably what a splendid player Hope was, when she first asked her."

"She knew, didn't she, after she had heard the sonata?"

"Yes, I suppose she had some idea, but she might not have been a very good judge. She said, you know, at once that she couldn't play like Hope, anyway."

"Yes, I heard her; so kind of her to say that," cried Kate, sarcastically.

Anna laughed. Then, "What's the matter with 'that girl,' as you call her?" she asked.

"Matter! well, I should think you could see as well as I that she is a forward sort of thing; that's all I've got against her," Kate concluded hastily, remembering her promise to Hope.

"Hope must have taken a great dislike to her."

"Why should you think that?"

"Because I never knew Hope Benham to set herself up on her violin-playing before, and refuse to play with anybody."

"Nobody has ever asked her to play a violin duet. It is she who has asked one of us to play an accompaniment for her now and then. You know that we should never have thought of going forward and offering to play for her."

"Oh, well, we knew all about her playing from Miss Marr. But you say nobody has ever asked her to play a violin duet. How about that little Vernon girl who left last term? Hope used to play with her a great deal, and Milly used to ask her too. Hope didn't care particularly for Milly Vernon."

"But she wanted to help her."

"And she wanted to be obliging too. Hope Benham has always been one of the kindest and most obliging girls in school."

"And she is now, but she has some sense and spirit, and probably doesn't mean to have a new-comer like Dorothea Dering take full possession of her on short acquaintance."

"Yes, it is a pretty short acquaintance," responded Anna, thoughtfully.

"That last remark of mine was a happy hit," thought Kate, triumphantly. "It has disposed of all the surmises about Hope's dislike, but," she further thought, "I wonder how this violin business is going to end. I prophesy that Miss Dorothea Dering will carry the day, and Hope will play that duet with her yet."