She would hear her schoolfellows discussing their homes, relations, and friends, and when she contrasted their gay doings with her own barren holidays she shrank into her shell, and would make no allusion to her private affairs.
"Lorna's an absolute oyster, you can get nothing out of her," was the universal verdict of her form.
But if she said little she thought a great deal.

She would listen jealously to the accounts of other people's fun, and a bitter feeling had grown in her heart.

Why should her life be so shadowed?
She had as much right to happiness as the rest of the school.

Why should she seem singled out by a vindictive fate and separated from her companions?
In justice to the girls at the Villa Camellia it is only fair to say that any separation was entirely of Lorna's own making.

Had she been more expansive she would have readily enough found friends.