"Isn't it awful?" Jane returned.
"Have you any idea how it came--about?"
"The reporter, Miss Nevins, was with Marian Seaton at the Breslin game," Jane answered frankly. "Of course, Marian--dislikes Helen."
"Oh, that's it! Well, this seems to be the final stroke. I have done everything possible, and made all sorts of allowances for Marian, because she has been handicapped by a frivolous mother, and an indulgent father. Of late when affairs at Wellington assumed a really serious turn, I felt our patience and endurance had been exhausted, and I may tell you, my dear, Miss Seaton was marked for leaving Wellington."
"Oh, that would be too bad," sighed the considerate Jane.
"Yes, I agree with you, but Miss Seaton has given so much annoyance. Only your own intervention more than once saved her. And this, in face of the fact that you were the most--abused victim of her idiosyncracies. But this is altogether too serious to admit of forgiveness. There's no telling what mischief that absurd article may work."
Jane accepted again the despised sheet, and reading the disputed "story" over more carefully, she visioned all sorts of dire calamities coming to defenceless little Helen, through this open announcement of "The Mystery of Wellington College." It was too awful--too horrible, after all their carefully executed plans, to save her from publicity.
As the train sped on to New York scenes at Wellington had also shifted. Marian Seaton and Dolorez Vincez were having their inevitable reckoning.
Dolorez had sought out Marian--going so far as to lie in wait for the harassed girl, as she left the grounds for her noon trip to the postoffice.