asm.

"Well, you ought to take an interest in her, Ingred, considering that
she lives at Rotherwood," put in Beatrice.

"At Rotherwood!"

"Yes, didn't you know _that_?"

Ingred, under pretence of distributing exercise-books, turned hastily
away. Her heart was in a sudden turmoil. This was indeed a bolt from the
blue. She, of course, knew that Rotherwood was let, but she had not
heard the name of the tenants, and, as the subject was a sore one, had
forborne to ask any questions at home. It was surely the irony of fate
that the house should be taken by people who had a daughter of her own
age, and that this daughter should come to the College, and actually be
placed in the same form as herself. She seemed a rival ready-made.
Biased by jealous prejudice, Ingred's hastily-formed judgment reversed
itself.

"I'm thankful I didn't move away from Verity to sit next to her," she
thought. "I expect she'll be ever so conceited and give herself airs,
and the other girls will truckle to her no end. I know them! I wish to
goodness she hadn't come to the College. Why didn't they send her away
to a boarding school? I'm not going to make a fuss over her, so she
needn't think it."

Poor Bess, quite unaware of being any cause of offence, and grateful for
the kindness shown her the day before, greeted Ingred in most friendly
fashion, and looked amazement itself at the cool reception of her
advances. She stared for a moment as if hardly believing the evidence of
her eyes and ears, then turned away with a hurt look on her pretty,
sensitive face.

Ingred shut her desk with a slam. She was feeling very uncomfortable.
She had liked Bess with a kind of love-at-first-sight, and if the latter
had come to live at any other house in the town than Rotherwood, would
have been prepared to go on liking her. Generosity whispered that her
conduct was unjust, but at this particular stage of Ingred's evolution
she did not always listen to those inner voices that act as our highest
guides. Like most of us, she had a mixed character, capable of many good
things but with certain failings. Rotherwood was what the girls called
"the bee in her bonnet," and the knowledge that Bess was in possession
of the beautiful home she had lost was sufficient to check the incipient
friendship.

It was otherwise with the rest of the form. They frankly welcomed the
new-comer, and if they did not, as Ingred had bitterly prognosticated,
exactly "truckle" to her, they c