Mrs. Peyton had not so much as nodded to Louise.
"Why, mamma," Bella broke out, "don't you remember Louise Treharne, my sworn and subscribed and vowed and vummed chum at Miss Mayhew's?"
"Bella!"
This time it was not merely an adjuration, it was a command.
Bella, perceiving then that something was wrong, flushed. But she was loyal to her friend.
"You are coming to see me immediately, dear?" she said, hurriedly shaking hands with Louise in order to obey her mother's command.
"Bella! Come to me at once!" Mrs. Peyton croaked with cutting, unconscionable rudeness, seizing her daughter by the arm and incontinently marching her off.
Louise, crimsoning, took the stab without a word.
"The tabby!" broke out Laura, her eyes flashing with indignation. "Gracious heaven, is it any wonder that men privately sneer at the way women treat each other? Don't you mind the shocking old cat, Louise; she'll tear herself to pieces with her own claws some day;" and Laura was unusually tender and kind in her treatment of Louise for the remainder of the afternoon. But, after that encounter, Louise learned to avoid meeting her school friends when, as occasionally happened, she saw them before they caught sight of her. She felt that they all "knew" or "would know," and she did not elect to take chances on additional snubs.
Her first formal meeting with Judd had been a trial. It had been an accidental encounter, happening about a week after Louise's return from school, and at a time when Mrs. Treharne was in more than one mind as to whether she would permit Louise to meet Judd at all. Mrs. Treharne and Judd were stepping out of the huge yellow car at the close of their late afternoon ride just at the moment when Louise, alone, was returning in Laura's car. Their meeting on the pavement was inevitable. For a moment Louise hoped that her mother would permit her to lag behind on pretense of returning to Laura's car to find some imaginary forgotten article; but Mrs. Treharne, suddenly deciding that the meeting had best be over with, since no way of avoiding it, sooner or later, had suggested itself, called to her; and Louise, very beautiful with her cold-ruddied cheeks nimbussed by her breeze-blown hair of bronze, walked erect to where her mother stood with the bulky, red-eyed Judd, who regarded Louise with a stare of disconcerting admiration.