Lilian felt like one dazed. Yet she was passionately indignant when she had reached her room. There might be other blue Tams in the town but she did not remember to have seen many in light blue except Miss Arnold’s. Somehow, Mrs. Dane had never taken to her cordially like Miss Arran and the teachers.
Mrs. Barrington was much distressed. She had become warmly interested in Lilian. She had smiled a little over Mrs. Dane’s strictures.
“There’s something about her, a sort of loftiness that doesn’t belong to her life, though she takes things with outward calmness, but I have a feeling that some day she will break out in an awful tempest, and I doubt her being that woman’s daughter. Mrs. Boyd never talks frankly about her,” Mrs. Dane said, severely.
“But she is devoted to the poor mother.”
“Well, it seems so,” rather reluctantly.
After dinner Mrs. Barrington summoned Miss Arran and laid the matter before her. She listened with a kind of terrified interest.
“I can’t believe Miss Boyd would tell such a dreadful falsehood, when she saw the necessity of the truth. Mrs. Dane has very strong prejudices. That Nevins girl is about her size and has a long braid of fair hair.”
“Oh, she was in disgrace in her room, but what a horrible thing that it should have gone on without even a physician, or any care to prevent the spread of contagion. Well—I suppose tomorrow it will be all over town. I gave Matthew strict orders to say nothing about it tonight.”
Presently Mrs. Barrington knocked at Mrs. Boyd’s door. Lilian opened it. She had been crying. Now she stretched out her hands imploringly.
“Oh, Mrs. Barrington you cannot believe I would tell you such a cruel, willful falsehood! I was not even very near that house. After all your kindness to me—”