Ardiune chuckled softly.
“By all means! Let us be the Red Cross Knights, and go out to right the wrong. We’ll attack Duessa straight away, and teach her to mend her morals. You’ll let Val be in it?”
“Rather! And Fauvette and Katherine. Seven’s a mystic number. You know there were the Seven Champions of Christendom, and there are the Seven Ages of Man, and the Seven Days of Creation, and seven years of apprenticeship, and—and––”
“Seven deadly sins!” suggested Aveline cheerfully. “And the Seven Vials—and––”
“Well, anyhow it’s always seven, so we’ll make ourselves into a society. We’ll have a star with seven rays for our secret sign. It has a nice occult kind of smack about it. When we chalk that mark upon anybody’s desk, it means we’ve 24 got to reform her, whether she likes it or whether she doesn’t.”
“She probably won’t,” twinkled Ardiune.
“Then the sooner she submits the better. She’ll find it’s no use fighting against fate—otherwise the Mystic Seven!”
“We’ll start business with Cynthia Greene to-morrow,” decided Aveline.
Fauvette, Valentine, and Katherine were duly informed of the existence of the new society and their initiation thereinto. They offered no objections, and indeed would have been prepared at Raymonde’s request to join a Black Brotherhood, or a Pirates’ League with a skull and cross-bones for its emblem. A special committee meeting was held to discuss the matter of Cynthia Greene.
“It needs finesse,” said Morvyth. “She’s been to school before, and she’s up to most dodges. Naturally she comprehends that her own Form are trying to rag her.”