Mark the difference between the sisters! Good-natured, giggling Pussy had left the establishment with a very small mental equipment. She could write a love-note,--with many ill-spelt adjectives, lavishly underscored; she could dance, crochet, do her hair, and make delicious cocoanut toffee; but she was as ignorant in her way as any Pahareen (hill woman), toiling under her load of baggage up the Ghât. But Pussy left behind her, as she went down, not a few devoted friends and many weeping eyes. Dominga, when it came to her turn to depart, not one; but she carried away a supply of information sufficient to flavour her conversation, and enable her to pose as "well informed." She wrote a fine hand, had worked hard at her singing, and imbibed some knowledge of history. Not only could she fix the date of the battle of Hastings, but of the battles of Pavia, Malplaquet, and Bunker Hill. She enjoyed reading realistic descriptions of the time of Nero, and the sack of Rome; the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the Reign of Terror. Her taste leaned to horrors, and she would have gone miles at any time to witness (surreptitiously) an execution! Dominga had her secrets--one was a whole live ambition! she ardently desired to shake off Manora and all her family, and to go forth into the world, there to shine alone. Although amazingly talkative, she was extremely reserved as to her own plans; no one guessed at her aim--an aim she never once permitted herself to lose sight of--its name was "emancipation." At sixteen years of age, her doting mother had summoned Dominga from school, and she was launched upon society at a railway ball (the same at which Monty had proposed for Blanche). Dom was a born flirt, extremely lively, and indeed so vivacious that she invariably created a sensation. She imagined that it was "smart" and "up-to-date" to be loud and noisy (an enemy at Naini Tal had told her this thing); consequently, she ruined her best prospects by establishing a reputation for being rowdy, and bad form. She threw things at supper, and sat on the edge of a refreshment table, dangling her legs, screaming repartees, and making an uproarious clamour. Thus she brought herself into immediate notice and ill-repute. But shrewd Dominga had long discovered that this pose was a calamitous mistake--a false step she could never repair. She had actually gone out of her way to destroy her own social chances. Then she was frightfully handicapped by the Jones family--not merely by Blanche and Monty, but by his horde of connections, and she was compelled to foregather with the party when her mother was unable to accompany her--and they were such a crew! Oh, if she could only get a fresh start now! This girl Verona was so quiet and ladylike--she had such an air of dignity, she was sure to be taken up by the cantonment. Doors, at which she had figuratively waited and whined in vain, would be thrown wide, and she was determined to enter them by clinging to her sister's skirts.