The car spun along strongly, so that the twenty miles' distance was speedily covered, and before Etheldreda was half-way through her dreams it had turned in at a gate, and there before her eyes lay Grey House, a square, pretentious-looking building, with a door in the middle and a stretch of three windows on either side. There, also--oh! thrilling and exciting moment--pressed against the panes of an upper window were a number of round white discs, which must obviously be the faces of pupils watching the advent of the new girl! Dreda sat up, and throwing back her golden mane, tossed a laughing remark to her mother--the first she had volunteered since leaving home, and showed her white teeth in a determined smile. If she were fated to arrive at all, she would arrive as a conqueror who would be regarded with envy and admiration. Privately, she might consider herself a martyr, but that was not a role in which she chose to appear before other people. She was smiling as she entered the drawing-room after her mother, smiling as Miss Bretherton came forward to greet them, smiling still, a forced, fixed smile, as she listened to the conversation between the two ladies. "Hope we shall be very happy together--" ("I shan't. I don't like you a bit! Scraggy, cross-looking thing! Your nose looks as if it would cut!") "...Dreda is fond of society. She will enjoy working with other girls!" ("Shan't, then! I shall hate it. I should have enjoyed it in Paris.") "...Beginnings always are a little difficult; but young people _soon_ adapt themselves!" ("It's easy to talk!") After a few minutes passed in the exchange of these and similar commonplaces, Mrs Saxon rose to depart. On a previous visit she had been shown over the house, and had seen the room where her daughter was to sleep, and now her presence would only prolong the agony. She cast a look at her daughter, full of yearning mother love and sympathy; but Dreda was smiling still, her grey eyes wide open, her very gums showing in the unnatural stretching of her lips. She submitted to be kissed, but offered no caress in return, and turned with a nonchalant air to examine the photographs on the mantelshelf, while Miss Bretherton escorted her mother to the door. They were all photographs of girls--old girls who had left school and could afford to be amiable and forgiving. One wore a cap and gown and was evidently a crack pupil who had won honours at college; another held a baby on her knee--she was pretty, and had married young; a third supported her head on her hand and stared dreamily into space; another posed against a screen. Dreda stared at them with eyes that grew misty and unseeing, as the motor puffed down the drive. Now she was alone-- away from home for the first time in her life! Miss Bretherton was coming back--Miss Bretherton with the thin face and the sharply pointed nose.