The next day the three girls and Lady Lushington started _en route_ for Interlaken. There they put up at one of the most fashionable hotels, and there Annie began to find her feet and gradually to undermine Lady Lushington's prejudice against her. Even if Mabel had not whispered the disconcerting fact to her that she had not made a good, impression on her aunt, Annie was far too sharp not to discover it for herself when Mabel said to her on that first night in the Grand Hotel in Paris, "I must tell you the truth, Annie; you are a failure so far; you have not pleased Aunt Henrietta, and Priscie has. I don't know what I shall do if you leave me, but I know Aunt Hennie will send you back pretty sharp to England if you don't alter your tactics, and how I am ever to meet all that lies before me if this happens is more than I can fathom." Annie had assured her friend that she need not be the least afraid, and, knowing the truth, or part of the truth, took her measures accordingly. They had not been settled at the Belle Vue Hotel, Interlaken, more than two days before Lady Lushington, who was an exceedingly selfish, worldly woman, although quite kind-hearted, began to alter her mind with regard to both Annie Brooke and Priscilla Weir. Priscilla, notwithstanding her fine and impressive eyes, her honest manner, and her earnest wish to make herself pleasant, looked undoubtedly _gauche_ in the old-fashioned garments which were mostly made for her by poor Susan Martin. Lady Lushington found that though people remarked on Priscilla when she walked with the others in the fashionable part of the town or sat with them when they listened to the band or took her place in the _salle-a-manger_ by their sides, yet those glances were by no means ones of admiration. The girl looked oppressed by a certain care, and dowdy beyond all words. Lady Lushington liked her, and yet she did not like her. She felt, however, bound to keep to her compact--to make the best of poor Priscilla. Accordingly, she told her friends that Priscilla Weir was a genius, and a little quaint with regard to her clothes, and that, in consequence, she had to put up with her peculiar dress. "But she is such an honest good creature," said Lady Lushington in conclusion, "that I am quite glad to have her as a companion for Mabel." Now the people to whom Lady Lushington gave this confidence were by no means interested in Priscilla's predilection for quaint clothes. They pronounced her an oddity, and left her to the fate of all oddities-- namely, to herself. Annie, on the contrary, who made the best of everything, and who looked quite ravishingly pretty in the smart frocks which Parker, by Lady Lushington's desire, supplied her with, came in for that measure of praise which was denied to poor Priscie. Annie looked very modest, too, and had such charming, unaffected, ingenuous blue eyes, the blue eyes almost of a baby.