The rest of the way they slipped along in silence under the shadow of the trees. Up the creaking stairway they crept, pausing a moment before they opened the door. Then they shot the rusty bolt noiselessly back in place, dropped the portière, and listened again.
"It's all right," whispered Ida, giving Lloyd's hand a reassuring squeeze as they tiptoed down the hall. "Oh, you're such a comfort! You'll never know what a load you've taken off my mind. Good night!"
In those few moments of silence between the orchard and the house, Lloyd's thoughts travelled rapidly. Her quarrel with Betty had faded so far into the background, that it seemed ridiculously trivial now. She had forgotten her grievance in listening to the tale of larger trouble. And since Ida had made it clear to her that it would be to her interest to be friendly with all the girls, she was eager to enlist Betty's sympathies and help. She wished fervently that she could share her secret with her. She burst into the room, her eyes shining with excitement, and blinking as they met the bright lamplight.
Betty was standing in her nightgown, ready for bed. She saw at the first glance that Lloyd's anger was over, and she drew a great sigh of relief.
"Oh, Betty," began Lloyd, impetuously, "I'm awfully sorry I made such a mountain out of a mole-hill this mawning and got into a tempah about what you said. You were right, aftah all. Ida thinks just as you do, that we oughtn't to go off by ourselves all the time, and she wants to be friends with the othah girls if they'll let her. I'm going back to the old ways to-morrow, and try not to let anything spoil the good times you talked about. Ida is so unhappy. I wish I could tell you, but I haven't any right—what she told me was in confidence. But if you only knew, you'd do all you could to help make it easiah for her with the girls."
"I'll do anything on earth you want me to!" exclaimed Betty. "This has been the longest, miserablest day I ever spent."
"Oh," cried the Little Colonel, a look of distress in her face. "Then I've spoiled 'The Road of the Loving Heart' that I wanted to leave in yoah memory. I haven't been true to my ring." She looked down at the talisman on her finger, the little lover's knot of gold, and turned it around regretfully.
"No, you haven't spoiled anything!" cried Betty. "It was my fault too. You're the dearest girl in the world, and I'll always think of you that way. Let's don't say another word about to-day. That's the best way to forget."
Lloyd began undressing, and Betty knelt down to say her prayers. The gong rang presently for all lights to be put out. The seminary settled itself to silence, then to sleep. But long after Betty's soft, regular breathing showed that she was in dreamland, Lloyd lay with wide-open, wakeful eyes. The moonlight streaming through the open window lay in a white square on the floor by her bed. She heard the clock in the hall toll eleven, twelve, and one before she fell asleep. The spell of the orchard was still upon her; the moonlight, the faint strains of music, Ida's white face with the tears in the violet eyes, and the glimmer of the pearl on her white hand came again and again in her fitful dreams, all through the night.