"Well, mother, I believe that, at the bottom, it's just shyness; she's ridiculously afraid of meeting strangers; after the first plunge she'd be cured. So, after a while, I'm going up to see how she is, and to ask if she wouldn't like to come down; and I'm going to keep on asking if she wouldn't like to come down till she comes; then you'll see if she'll be any the worse for coming." On this programme Miss Vernon acted. But the people, when they did begin to appear, arrived so fast, by land and water, and occupied her so completely, that it was some time before she was able to pay a first visit to her friend; and then, so far as inducing her to put in an appearance on the lawn was concerned, it was paid in vain. A second and a third time she tried; and it was only on the fourth occasion she prevailed; then the girl yielded less to her importunity than to her assurance that many of the people had already gone, and the rest were presently going. The consciousness of the false position she was in weighed on Dorothy so heavily that again and again that afternoon she had wished, with all her heart, that she had never allowed the individual she had known as Eric Frazer to inflict her on these good people. If she had held out against him, as she ought to have done, he never could have brought her there. But she had not understood; it seemed to her that he had taken advantage of her ignorance. The worst of it was she did not understand yet; exactly how false her position was still she did not know. For instance, was he really the Earl of Strathmoira? Her simplicity, on such points, was pristine. To her, an earl was a person so far above her that he was, practically, a being of a superior world. If he was such an effulgent creature why had he passed himself off to her as a common man?--a plain mister? Why had he condescended to notice her at all?--to give her shelter?--to feign interest in her sordid story?--it could only have been feigned. Why had he lied and played the trickster to save such an one as she from the fate which he, so superior a being, must have known that she deserved? His whole attitude in the matter was incomprehensible to her; it added to that confusion of her mental faculties which had been great enough before.