Lloyd looked up in alarm.
"Yes, it was Ida Shane whom the matron discovered trying to steal out of the seminary last night. Ned Bannon was waiting outside to take her on the fast express to Cincinnati. They were to have been married there this morning at his cousin's had they not been interrupted in their plans."
Lloyd gave a gasp, and the tree outside the window seemed to be going round and round.
"We have telegraphed for her aunt. She will be here this afternoon to take her home, and the affair will be ended as far as the seminary is concerned. Now what I must know, is just what connection have you had with it. Ida confessed that a member of the Shadow Club had helped her carry on a clandestine correspondence for awhile, but for some reason suddenly refused to be the bearer of their letters any longer. It was for that reason, she said, feeling that her only friend had failed her, that she consented to the elopement, which happily has been prevented."
"Oh, Doctah Wells! Do you think I am to blame for it?" cried Lloyd, wishing that the ground would open and swallow her if he should say yes.
"It was so hard to know what to do! It neahly broke my heart to refuse her, but—it was this way."
With the tears running down her face she poured out the whole story, from the beginning of her devotion to Ida, to the day when, under her grandmother's portrait she fought the battle between her love for her friend and loyalty to the family honour.
"There wasn't anybody to tell me," she sobbed at the last. "And if I was wrong and am to blame for Ida's running away, nobody will evah trust me again!"
A very tender smile flashed across the doctor's stern face and the eyes gleamed through the spectacles with a kinder light than she had ever seen in them, as he leaned forward to say:
"I have known George Lloyd many, many years, my child, and I want to say that he has never had more reason to be proud of anything in his life than that his little granddaughter, under such a test, recognized the right and stood true to the traditions of an old and honourable family when it cost her a friendship that she held very dear. Just now Ida feels that she has been cruelly used, and that her happiness is wrecked for life; but in time she will see differently. Poor mistaken child! I talked with her this morning. Ned is only a selfish, overgrown boy, with many bad habits, and like many another of his kind knows that the plea that she is reforming him is the strongest argument he can use in influencing her. He tells her she is doing that, but to my certain knowledge he has not given up a single vice since he has known her. She thinks that it is her duty to cling to him. I admire her devotion in one way, but it makes her blind to every other duty. She is too infatuated to be able to judge between the right and wrong, and at present feels bitter toward the whole world.