There was a crowd of girls round the table in the hall when she came in. The postman had just been, and the letters were lying on the hall table, and the girls were crowding round. Among the girls standing by the table was Pamela Gwatkin. She looked up when Lucy came in wet and draggled, and a dull red flush crept up under her skin, and her lips tightened. 'Wherever has she been such a morning as this?' said one of the girls aloud as Lucy passed them. She didn't pause at the table and look for her letters like the rest. She didn't expect letters by every post like other girls; the coming of the postman never stirred her pulse the least. She had no one to write to her. Pamela didn't vouchsafe Lucy another look, but went back to her room with her head lifted high, and her letters--she had quite a sheaf of them, letters and papers--clutched to her bosom. She didn't attempt to open them when she got back to her room. She went straight to the window and looked out at the blinding rain. 'She has been to meet him again,' she murmured; 'and such a morning as this! She must be very far gone. Oh, it is outrageous! It is quite indecent!' Another girl who had seen her come in followed Lucy back to her room, and just as she had reached it Lucy shut the door in her face. Nothing daunted, Capability Stubbs tried the handle of the door, but Lucy had locked it on the inside; no doubt she was taking her wet things off. One doesn't take the occasion to hold a levee when one is wet to the skin. Lucy did not appear at breakfast. Nobody missed her but Maria Stubbs; everybody else was too much occupied with her own affairs. The very air of the place was full of examinations, and the loss, the total disappearance, of half a dozen girls, more or less--freshers--wouldn't have been noticed at this exciting moment. Before she went to her morning's work Miss Stubbs tried Lucy's door again. It was open this time; the housemaid had just come out, and there was that silly little Lucy sitting at her table with her wet things still on. There was a strained look on her white face, as if she had been working at a problem all night, and it hadn't come out right yet. 'Oh, good gracious!' Miss Stubbs exclaimed, when she came over to the girl and put her hand on her wet shoulder. 'Whatever _are_ you sitting here for?' Lucy looked up with a faint look of wonder in her eyes, and then, finding she had forgotten to take off her wet things, she began slowly to peel them off one by one. Maria Stubbs had no patience with her. She pulled and dragged at her clinging wet garments, and tore off her shoes, and wrapped her up in a warm dressing-gown of her own that she ran across the passage to fetch. When she had got her out of her wet rags, she fetched her a cup of hot tea from the hall, where the tea-urn was still steaming, and then she began to bully her.