prospect of
the coming interview made her cold with apprehension. She avoided Garnet
at one o'clock, and hurried out of the dressing-room without speaking
to any one. She had a wild project of pleading a headache, and begging
Aunt Harriet to let her stop at home for the rest of the day. But then
to-morrow's explanations would be infinitely worse. No, it was better to
face the horrible ordeal and get it over. As it happened, Miss Beach had
gone out to lunch, so that leave of absence was an impossibility. Winona
ate her early dinner alone.

"Aren't you well, miss? Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?"
asked Alice the housemaid, noticing that the pudding was unappreciated,
and divining that something must be amiss.

"No, thanks! I'm in a hurry, and must fly off to school as quickly as I
can. It's my early afternoon."

Winona had a music lesson at a quarter past two on Thursdays. It was
always rather a rush to get back in time for it. She crammed her "Bach's
Preludes" and "Schubert's Impromptus" automatically into her portfolio,
and started. It was only when she was half-way down Church Street that
she remembered she had left her book of studies on the top of the piano.
Needless to say, her lesson that day was hardly a success. In the
disturbed state of her mind she was quite incapable of concentrating her
attention on music. Miss Catteral looked surprised at her wrong notes
and imperfect phrasing.

"I shall expect to find some improvement in this 'Impromptu' next week,"
she remarked. "Have you practiced your hour daily? You must take these
bars, which I have marked, separately, and play each twenty times in
succession, slowly at first and then faster, and remember here that it
is the left hand which gives the melody, and the right is only the
accompaniment. I thought you had sufficient music in you to appreciate
that! The way you thumped out those chords was painful. I am not pleased
at all."

Miss Catteral so rarely scolded that Winona felt doubly humiliated. It
was all a part and parcel of the general ill-luck of the day. She
fetched her drawing-board, and went to the art class. Here at least she
would have peace for an hour, though every one of the sixty minutes was
bringing her nearer to her dreaded interview. At four o'clock, with a
horrible sinking feeling in her heart, and a trembling sensation in her
knees, she knocked at the door of the head-mistress's study, and entered
in response to the "Come in!"