. For Bella was older than the
unseen "chorus" on the landing, who did not think of pitying him. She
had seen more of the world, and was better acquainted with its cares
and troubles. She called him in her own mind "the poor young gent!" It
occurred to her as it did not occur to the others, that he might take
to bad ways and be a lost man, like Jem Wade the carpenter, after her
pretty, flighty sister Lotty had given him the sack. Nothing less than
that might be the end of this day's work.

But such a way of looking on a lover and his woes was far from the
thoughts of Bella's young mistresses. On the contrary, they had
difficulty in restraining merry little titters, though Annie did take
herself to task and murmur "For shame!" when Rose made a solemn, stupid
face like what she considered Tom Robinson's on this occasion.

To do the girls justice, however, they did not laugh when Dora, who had
been with her mother, came slowly across the lobby and followed the
visitor into the drawing-room in order to administer the _coup de
grace_. It might have been a veritable dagger-thrust to be dealt by a
weak little shrinking hand, with the owner's head turned and face
averted--such a white, grieved, frightened girl's face it was.

Her companions' eyes were opened, for the instant a fellow-feeling smote
them. This was no light jest or piece of child's play; it might be their
turn next. Oh! who would not be sorry for Dora to have to inflict real
pain and bitter disappointment, to be condemned to kill a man's faith
in woman, perhaps, certainly to murder his peace and happiness for the
present, to extinguish the sweetest, brightest dream of his early
manhood, for he would never have another quite so tender and radiant?
Would Dora ever be quite the same again after she had done so hard a
thing?

Annie pulled herself up and accused herself of getting absolutely
maudlin. The idea of Tom Robinson of "Robinson's," with his middle size,
matter-of-fact air, and foxy hair and moustache, entertaining such a
dream and relinquishing it with a pang of mortal anguish that would
leave a long sickening heart-ache behind! It was the infection of all
the silly love stories she had ever read which had received a kind of
spurious galvanic life from the very ordinary circumstance, the feather
in her cap, as so many girls would have regarded it, of Dora, having to
receive and refuse an offer of marriage. Why, she--Annie--and her
sisters, including Dora