Vashti's Fate — page 132: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A NEW WARDROBE. 127 enthusiasm had been pent up long enough. The popular feeling had been gradually working round in Vashtis favor, without her being conscious of it, and now, as she looked around upon her excited troop of adherents, she was half inclined to think it all a hoax. The Brent party was voted down, and, finding itself so much in the minority, quitted the field ingloriously. As Vashti, surrounded by this strange new homage, passed to the house, she met Professor Thorpe. He was laughing his quiet, excessively-amused laugh; he had wit- nessed the whole scene evidently, and, as he stepped aside for the brown Holland apron to pass, he lifted his cap with -an expressive and humorous glance, saying : ‘Queen Vashti !” Vashti blushed, but could not help laughing. As she ran up the steps the laugh was echoed, as_well as Professor Thorpe’s exclamation, and beforeshe knew it she was chat- ting and parrying jokes in the sitting-room—that sitting- room which ‘she had never but once before entered willingly. : How she enjoyed yet shrank from Mrs. Gordon’s aston- ishment, as she came into the room, to see what all the bustle and clatter was about. In her surprise, that lady forgot to deliver the reprimand that was on her lips, and, ‘instead, stood watching the new expressions that were flit- ting over Vashti’s happy face, like sunshine over a somber landscape. That evening, as Vashti was retiring, Mrs. Gordon came to the door. **Will you fet Violet Granger sleep with you?” she said. “There is a young lady come, and I have no room in readiness for her, unless you take her into yours, and Violet begged hard that she might come to you instead,” com 2B) (ee) Cbooks