Laura, as the hotel child, had been pathetic, but her dignity had been safeguarded, if not actually enhanced, by the kaleidescopic background of her surroundings. At school, she was pitiful--and out of place. The girls, without ill nature, despised her from the first. She arrived amongst them in the short, fanciful, ultra-picturesque silk frocks and infantile bows of hair ribbon that I had seen her wear abroad. Those unimaginative, untravelled English schoolgirls had seen no one like her before, and what they did not know, by experience or by tradition, they distrusted and disliked. Lundeen School made demands upon the pupils’ _physiques_, upon their powers of conformity, and upon each one’s capacity for assimilating wholesale a universally applied system. Laura di san Marzano had no chance at all. The child who “never forgot people” could not remember her multiplication table, and although she spoke perfectly at least three languages besides English, she had never learnt syntax, nor read a line of any history. She had seen the Guitrys play in Paris--(and from her crisp appreciations and criticisms I deduced that no finest _nuance_ of their art had been lost upon her)--but she had memorized no standard selections from the poets. And she did not know how to learn. No one, not even the head mistress, was very much disturbed by Laura’s educational deficiencies, because it was so evident from the first that her stay amongst us would only be a very temporary affair. Mama would certainly swoop down again, probably without warning, and resume Laura as suddenly as she had discarded her. That was how mama always did things, one felt sure. Laura herself, although evidently aware of her shortcomings, accepted them with a grave, but unexaggerated, regret. She seemed, quite without arrogance, to know that, even educationally, there were other standards than those of Lundeen, and that her connection with these latter was after all merely transitory. What really distressed her, and shocked her too, I think, was the attitude of the other girls. Compared with the hotel child, there was only one word that adequately described these daughters of so many excellent English homes--and that word was _uncivilised_. They played unbeautiful games violently, they spoke in hideous slang, they were rudest when they intended to be most friendly. Towards Laura di san Marzano, indeed, they did not wish nor attempt to display friendliness. They were simply contemptuous. And I saw that the hotel child minded that, both from pride and from ultra-developed social instinct. My work was entirely amongst the elder girls, and I saw very little of Laura during her brief stay, but towards the end of it, something happened. The rumour arose and spread like wild-fire, even to reaching the Common Room of the teaching staff, that Laura di san Marzano was in disgrace with her fellows for cheating over an examination paper.