CHAPTER THE THIRD

THE MORNING OF THE CRISIS

Part 1

Two days after came the day of the Crisis, the day of the Fadden Dance.
It would have been a crisis anyhow, but it was complicated in Ann
Veronica's mind by the fact that a letter lay on the breakfast-table
from Mr. Manning, and that her aunt focussed a brightly tactful
disregard upon this throughout the meal. Ann Veronica had come down
thinking of nothing in the world but her inflexible resolution to go to
the dance in the teeth of all opposition. She did not know Mr. Manning's
handwriting, and opened his letter and read some lines before its import
appeared. Then for a time she forgot the Fadden affair altogether.
With a well-simulated unconcern and a heightened color she finished her
breakfast.

She was not obliged to go to the Tredgold College, because as yet the
College had not settled down for the session. She was supposed to be
reading at home, and after breakfast she strolled into the vegetable
garden, and having taken up a position upon the staging of a disused
greenhouse that had the double advantage of being hidden from the
windows of the house and secure from the sudden appearance of any one,
she resumed the reading of Mr. Manning's letter.

Mr. Manning's handwriting had an air of being clear without being easily
legible; it was large and rather roundish, with a lack of definition
about the letters and a disposition to treat the large ones as