So Dorothy hurried, her tall slender figure held very straight, her
pretty head a little in the air, in her eyes a gleaming light. She
believed herself to be passing from a world she knew into one of which
she had dreamed. But she was mistaken; she was going into a world of
which she had not dreamed. Sister Celestine met her at the door.
"It is Mr Emmett?" she inquired.
"Yes," replied the Sister, "it is Mr Emmett."
Something in her tone; on her face; in her glance; struck quick-witted
Dorothy.
"What is the matter? Why do you look at me like that? What is he
like?"
"Who am I that I should be able to tell you what he is like, when I
have seen him for scarcely five minutes?"
The Sister smiled, it seemed to Dorothy, not with that brightness
which she knew so well. The young lady's mental processes were rapid.
She divined, on the instant, that Sister Celestine was disappointed
with Mr Emmett. As she went with the Sister from the garden to the
guest-room she wondered why. Would she be disappointed also?--after
all her talks with Frances?--her communings with herself? She had
fashioned the unknown Mr Emmett in so many shapes that she could not
have told which of them she expected to see; certainly it was not the
person she actually saw. Her knowledge of men had practically been
restricted to the personages in the storybooks which found their way
into the convent precincts. These had to undergo a severe examination
before being admitted, as one bad character was enough to damn them;
and, as the conventual standard of masculine morals was peculiar, even
if the individuals who figured in the tales were not drawn from
imagination they certainly were not taken from life. One requirement
all the men in the books had to satisfy: they all had to be gentlemen,
or what the convent censor took to be gentlemen. Dorothy Gilbert might
have had more or less vague doubts, but it never had been brought
clearly home to her that a man could be anything but a gentleman till
she entered that guest-room and was introduced to Mr Emmett. When she
saw him, any illusions she may have had upon that point were shattered
at once and for ever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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