For some time Marion tossed restlessly from side to side; but at last, finding it impossible to quiet herself, much less to sleep, she got up, bathed her face, and prepared to arrange her disordered hair.
To her excited imagination, it seemed almost as if she could hear the girls downstairs discussing the whole matter. Every laugh she heard she believed to be at her expense, and she dreaded meeting her companions, knowing full well that her looks and actions would be the subject of general comment.
Throughout the school Marion was not a general favorite; almost all the girls admired her, but there were few who felt that they really knew her.
She was acknowledged by almost all her companions to be the brightest and prettiest girl in the school, and was apparently on good terms with all of them; but that was all. Many who would have liked to know her better, and who would have been glad to make advances of intimate friendship, felt themselves held back from doing so, by a certain haughty, reserved manner, which she at times assumed, and by her own evident disinclination for anything more than an amicable school-girl acquaintance.
Marion was quick to perceive the petty weaknesses and follies of these around her, and her keen sense of the ludicrous, combined with a habit of saying sharp, sarcastic things, often led her to draw out these foibles, and show them up in their most absurd light.
No one knew her faults better than Marion herself, and she was constantly struggling to overcome them; but her pride and strong will led her to conceal her real feelings, and often when she was at heart angry with herself, and ashamed of her wilful, perhaps unkind, behavior, she would assume an aspect of supreme indifference, effectually deceiving every one as to what was really passing in her mind.
She kept her struggles to herself. No one but her friend Florence and Miss Christine knew how sincerely she longed to conquer her faults, and how severe these struggles were.
The knowledge of them had come to Miss Christine by accident. One day Marion had said something unusually sharp and cutting to one of her companions, but had appeared perfectly unconscious of having done anything unkind, and had gone to her own room humming a tune, with the most perfect nonchalance.