Page:Firecrackers a realistic novel.pdf/193

 Meanwhile Consuelo continued her private education with the Brothers Steel at their own gymnasium, accompanied now by Miss Elizabeth Graves, the new governess, an Englishwoman whom Laura had selected primarily because she did not appear to be the possessor of an inventive mind. Laura thought she might be able to keep her at least until she found time to discover a house on the far-east side, a project suggested to her by a casual remark of Campaspe.

Consuelo nourished reasons of her own for not desiring to join the new school, although, in an impersonal way, she admired Miss Pinchon and was sufficiently appreciative of her spirit of aggressive determination. It was not difficult for her to persuade her father to permit her to please herself in this respect, as George had long ago decided to allow Consuelo to do anything she wanted to do within reason. She seems, he explained to Laura, not entirely to his wife's satisfaction, to know so much better what to do and how to do it than the rest of us.

To Consuelo, however, the lesson-hours brought no pleasure. They constituted, rather, a severe penance, a means to an end which was not too apparent either to her parents or to her professors. Occasionally, a certain laxity and lassitude betrayed itself in her actions, even while she was in the gymnasium. Ordinarily, on the contrary, she displayed an energy, a grim intensity, which soon