She had lost the feeling that she was doing her an injustice
by not acknowledging her as her niece. As Tom's wife she would be as a
daughter to her. She would have everything that was hers by right.
Rhoda stepped rather slowly down, her head bent, a line of anxiety showing
between her clearly pencilled dark brows. She knew something about Pauline
that she was beginning to feel Miss Merivale should know. Yet she had no
wish to disclose the secret she had accidentally learnt. At first it had
amused her, it amused her still. In the brief, decidedly unpleasant
_tete-a-tete_ which Rose had just put an end to, she had found it easy to
bear Pauline's half-veiled taunts. Ever since her visit to Leyton she had
understood the bitter animosity which Miss Smythe had shown her from the
first. It was not altogether a personal dislike. Rhoda was sure that she
would have treated in the same manner any girl who was poor and yet was
not ashamed of her poverty or of her friends.
"Rhoda."
Miss Merivale's gentle call made her hurry her footsteps. Her face had a
wonderfully sweet look on it as she approached Miss Merivale. Miss
Merivale's kindness had completely won the girl's heart. She was so happy
at Woodcote that sometimes she felt as if it must be a dream from which
she would awake to find herself in the lonely bedroom in Acacia Road with
the boys' cots empty, and a long London day of searching for work to look
forward to.
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